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IEE IN EARNEST. 



SIX LECTURES, 



CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY AND ARDOR, 



BY THE REV. JAMES HAMILTON. 

AUTHOR OF ; * HARP ON THE WILLOWS," ETC. 



NOT SLOTHFUL IN BUSINESS' 
FERVENT IN SPIRIT ; 
SERVING THE LORD. 

Rom. xiL 11 



Fri-o gorh : 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

No. 530 Broadway. 

18 8 6. 



< 



\ 



e*y 






V9 

CONTENTS. 

LECTURE I. 

Pas*. 
Industry . » • » . • 21 

LECTURE II. 
Industry < Ai 

LECTURE III. 
An Eye to the Lord Jesus 66 

LECTURE IV. 
A Fervent Spirit 86 

LECTURE V. 
The Threefold Cord 107 

LECTURE VI. 
A Word to Each and to AR — Conclusion 13 ) 






TO THE 

KIRK-SESSION AND CONGREGATION 

OF THE 

NATIONAL SCOTCH CHURCH, 
REGENT SaUARE. 



My dear Friends : — 

It sometimes adds to the interest, 
and even to the usefulness of a book, to 
know the reason of its publication. I may 
therefore mention in the outset, tnat it is 
for your sakes that the following pages ap- 
pear in print. As all my efforts can not 
secure that amount of pastoral intercourse 

for which T long, I felt desirous of sending 
1* 



D INTRODUCTION. 

to your several homes a word in season at 
the opening of this year ; and, as an ap- 
propriate remembrancer at such a time, I 
have selected the following familiar lectures. 
You now receive them in nearly the same 
homely guise in which you first made their 
acquaintance a few sabbaths ago.* For the 
directness of the style and the plainness of 
the illustrations, I do not apologize. They 
are not more a natural propensity than the 
result of conscientious conviction ;t for as 
I can not be persuaded that, in matters of 
taste, anything is eloquent which does not 
answer the end in view, nor that in theolo- 

* They were delivered as part of a course of lec- 
tures on the Romans, on the morning and evening of 
sabbaths, November 17 and 24, and December 1, 1844. 
Except the fourth, of which there were no written 
notes, they appear with few retrenchments or altera- 
tions. 

t 2 Cor. iii. 12; Matt. xiii. 3. 



INTRODUCTION. _ 7 

gy anything is sublime which is not scrip- 
tural : so I can not think that, in preach- 
ing, anything is out cf place which puts the 
truth in its proper p. ace — in the memories 
and the hearts of the hearers — nor that any- 
thing is mean which can trace its pedigree 
back to the Mount of Beatitudes. But 
while I offer no apology for the style of 
these lectures, I tender my cordial thanks 
to those hearers whose earnestness, or in* 
tellectual elevation, or personal kindness, 
has made them listen so willingly to a mode 
of preaching not the less distasteful because 
it can plead exalted precedents ; and I own 
that it has been not the least comfort of my 
ministry, that among yourselves, preaching 
like the following specimen has found so 
many attentive hearers. There is only one 
satisfaction greater — the belief that many are 
applying practically what most hear so pa- 
tiently. 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

And now, dear brethren, were it not the 
restraining thought that colder eyes than 
yours may look upon these pages, there are 
v many things I would like to say. I would 
like to commemorate some of the mercies 
which have crowned the three and a half 
years during which we have worshipped 
together ; and I would like to give you 
some idea of my own affection for you. To 
the elders for counsel never asked nor adopt- 
ed in vain — to both elders and deacons for 
days and portions of the night devoted to 
labors of love, which but for their pains- 
taking could never have been accomplished 
— to the self-denying teachers of the sabbath- 
school and of the week-evening class — and 
to all who have contributed their willing aid 
in various schemes of usefulness — I would 
tender a pastor's warmest gratitude. And 
I would like to mention with gratitude to 
God two things which have made my own 



INTRODUCTION. 



heart often glad — the harmony of our church, 
and the happiness of your abodes. Wherev- 
er I see innocent or holy joy, I try to make 
some of it my own ; and I believe that most 
of my earthly happiness of late has been a 
transfusion from your joy. Seldom does a 
day transpire without seeing as much in- 
door comfort and tranquillity — as much 
mutual affection of heads of families, and 
parents and children, and brothers and sis- 
ters — with so evident an aspect of God's 
blessing on many homes, as are an unspeak- 
able delight to me. Does not God's good- 
ness in this respect often strike yourselves, 
and make you sing the twenty-third psalm ? 

" My table thou hast furnished 
In presence of my foes ; 
My head thou dost with oil anoint, 
And my cup overflows. 

" Goodness and mercy all my life 
Shall surely follow me : 
And in God's house for evermore 
My dwelling-place shai be.'* 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

And in some measure the result of domes- 
tic piety and peace, I here record with grat- 
itude our congregational harmony. Sure 
enough we have hitherto dwelt together in 
unity ; and as I can truly say for my breth- 
ren, your office-bearers, that, our anxiety is 
your edification, so has your " order" been 
our " joy." 

But while the acknowledgment of God's 
goodness is the delightful employment of a 
closing year, it is no less incumbent, with 
an opening year, to consider what more we 
~an do for the God of our mercies in the 
days or months to come. As a church, we 
have congregational duties, and each mem- 
ber of the church has personal duties. Let 
your minister remind you of some of these. 

1. Let this new year be a year of greater 
activity. Be diligent in your proper cal- 
ling, in seeking personal improvement, and 
in doing good. Ply your daily ca ling in a 



.INTRODUCTION. H 

Christian spirit, doing nothing by constraint 
or grudgingly, but adorning the doctrine of 
God your Savior by your patient, sprightly, 
and thoroughgoing industry. Seek person- 
al improvement. Give yourselves to the 
reading of instructive and religious books ; 
and when friends meet, let them strive to 
give the conversation a profitable turn, and 
one which may minister to the use of edify- 
ing. The Young .Men's Society is an in- 
centive to study, and an outlet for the re- 
sults of reading; and those young men who 
are desirous of mutual improvement should 
all be members of it. Engage in some di- 
rect effort to do good. An earnest and 
willing spirit will find or make a field of 
usefulness for itself. Ascertaining, in the 
course of their visits to the poor, that in 
many families the older girls could read 
little or none, and were kept at home du- 
ring the day, attending to the younger chil- 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

dren, a few ladies opened a class at five in 
the afternoon, to teach these girls to read 
and write, and undertook to conduct it per- 
sonally. In a short time the room was full, 
and there are now about seventy of these 
young people learning to read the Word of 
God intelligently, who, but for this self- 
denying experiment, must have grown up 
in ignorance. We know of similar efforts 
on a less extended scale. And in the same 
spirit, several local prayer-meetings have 
been opened, and are attended by people 
not likely to have found their way to any 
other place of worship. The diligence of 
district visiters has been productive of much 
obvious benefit in bringing several back to 
the forsaken sanctuary, and the affectionate 
assiduity of the sabbath-school teachers has 
in several hopeful instances reaped its pres- 
ent reward. Brethren, be ambitious of 
doing good. Seek to leave the world the 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

better for your sojourn in it. Whatever you 
attempt, endeavor to do it so thoroughly, 
and follow it up so resolutely, that the re- 
sult shall be ascertained and evident. And 
in your attempts at usefulness, be not only 
conscientious but enthusiastic. Love the 
work. Redeem the time. Remember that 
the Lord is at hand. 

2. Let this new year be a year of greater 
liberality. There are some objects to which 
of late you have given very largely ; and 
there are those among you who give to 
every object freely, and with a self-denying 
generosity. But by a little systematic fore- 
thought and contrivance, begun now and 
carried through the year, many might dou- 
ble their contributions without at all abridg- 
ing their real enjoyments. The maxim " I 
can do without it" — if all Regent Square 
acted on it for a single year, might build a 
school or send out a missionary. If all the 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

money which you children spend on cakes 
and toys, and which we grown-up people 
spend on playthings and parties, were put 
into the Lord's treasury, we should have as 
much as we wanted for all our cono;reo;a- 
tional purposes, and a great deal over to 
help our neighbors. And while some are 
striving how much they can do, let others 
strive how much they can give to the cause 
of Christ this year. Those w T ho excel in 
the one are likely to excel in the other ; fo- 
just as those who have too little faith to 
give, have usually too little fervor to work, 
so the hardest workers are usually the lar- 
gest givers. 

3. Let this be a year of greater spiritu- 
ality. As the holy Joseph Alleine wrote 
from Ilchester prison to his flock at Taun- 
ton, " Beloved Christians, live like your- 
selves ; let the world see that the promises 
of God, and privileges of the gospel, are not 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

empty sounds, or a mere crack. Let the 
heavenly cheerfulness, and the restless dili- 
gence, and the holy raisedness of your con- 
versations, prove the reality, and excellency, 
and beauty of your religion to the world.'' 
Aim at an elevated life. Seek to live so 
near to God, that you shall not be over- 
whelmed by those amazing sorrows which 
you may soon encounter, nor surprised by 
that disease which may come upon you in 
a moment, suddenly. Let prayer never be 
a form. Always realize it as an approach 
to the living God for some specific purpose , 
and learn to watch for the returns of prayer. 
Let the Word of God dwell in you richly. 
That sleep will be sweet and that awaking 
hallowed where a text of Scripture, or a 
stanza of a spiritual song, imbues the last 
thoughts of consciousness. Occasionally 
read the biography of some eminent Chris 
tian, such as Doddridge, or Pearce, or Mar 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

tyn, or Fletcher, or Charles of Bala, or R. 
M'Cheyne : for it will show how much of 
Christ's presence may be enjoyed here on 
earth, and may stir you up to a more loving, 
devout, and watchful life. Do not forsake 
any of the stated assemblies for worship ; 
and let friends, when they meet, often con- 
verse on those things which may edify one 
another. See that you make progress ; see 
that when the year is closing, you have not 
all the evil tempers and infirmities of char- 
acter which presently afflict you ; but see to 
it that if God grant you to sit down on the 
Ebenezer of another closing year, you may 
,..oe able to look back on radiant spots w T here 
you enjoyed seasons of spiritual refreshing 
and victories over enemies heretofore too 
strong for you. Happy new year ! if its 
path were so bright and ite progress so 
vivid, that in a future retrospect your eye 
could fix on many a Bethel and Peniel 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

along its track, and your grateful memory 
could say, " Yonder is the grave where T 
buried a long-besetting sin, and that stone 
of memorial marks where God made me to 
triumph over a fierce temptation through 
Jesus Christ. Yon sabbath was the top of 
the hill where I clasped the cross, and the 
burden fell off my back ; and that commu- 
nion was the land of Beulah, where I saw 
the far-off land and the king in his beauty." 

iC Come, let us anew our journey pursue, 
Roll round with the year, 
And never stand still till the Master appear. 

" His adorable will let us gladly fulfil, 
And our talents improve* 
By the patience of hope and the labor of love 

" that each in the day of his coming may say, 
6 1 have fought my way through ; 
I have finished the work thou didst give me to do.' 

u that each from his Lord may receive the glad word, 
e Well and faithfully done : 
Enter into my joy, and sit down on my throne.' " 

* 2 # 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

My dear friends, it is a blessed thing to 
know the Savior — to feel that your soul is 
safe. You have been in a ship when it en- 
tered the harbor, and you have noticed the 
different looks of the passengers as they 
turned their eyes ashore. There w r as one 
who, that he might not lose a moment's 
time, had got everything ready for landing 
long ago ; and now he smiles and beckons 
to yon party on the pier, who, in their turn, 
are so eager to meet him, that they almost 
press over the margin of the quay : and no 
sooner is the gangway thrown across, than 
he has hold of the arm of one, and another 
is triumphant on his shoulder, and all the 
rest are leaping before and after him on 
their homeward way. But there was an- 
other who showed no alacrity. He gazed 
with pensive eye on the nearer coast, and 
seemed to grudge that the trip was over. 
He was a stranger, going among strangers ; 



INTRODUCTION ID 

and though sometimes during the voyage 
he had a silent hope that something unex- 
pected might occur, and that some friendly 
face might recognise him in regions where 
he was going an alien and an adventurer — 
no such welcoming face is there ; and with 
reluctant steps he quits the vessel, and com- 
mits himself to the unknown country. And 
now that every one else has disembarked, 
who is this unhappy man whom they have 
Drought on deck, and, groaning in his heavy 
chains, whom they are conducting to the 
dreaded shore ? Alas ! he is a felon and 
a runaway, whom they are bringing back to 
take his trial there : and no wonder he is 
loath to land. 

Now, dear brethren, our ship is sailing 
fast. We shall soon hear the rasping on 
the shallows, and the commotion overhead, 
which bespeak the port in view. When if 
comes to that, how shall you feel ? Are you 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

a stranger, or a convict, or are you going 
home ? Can you say, " I know whom I 
have believed ?" Have you a Friend with- 
in the veil ? And however much you may 
^njoy the voyage, and however much you 
may like your fellow-passengers, does your 
heart sometimes leap up at the prospect of 
seeing Jesus as he is, and so being ever 
with the Lord ? 

The Lord send you a happy, a holy, and 
a useful year ! Accept this little token of 
your pastor's wish to help your faith and 
joy ; and believe me 

Your ever-affectionate minister, 

James Hamilton. 
January 1, 1845. 



LIFE IN EARNEST. 



LECTURE I. 

INDUSTRY. 

* Not slothful in business. 1 ' — Romans xii. 11. 

Two things are very certain — that we 
have all got a work to do, and are all, more 
or less, indisposed to do it : in other words, 
every man has a calling, and most men have 
a greater or less amount of indolence, which 
disinclines them for the work of that calling. 
Many men would have liked the gospel all 
the bfetter, if it had entirely repealed the 
sentence, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt 
thou eat thy bread ;" had it proclaimed a , 
final emancipation from industry, and turn- 



22 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ed our world into a merry playground or 
luxurious dormitory. But this is not what 
the gospel does. It does not abolish la- 
bor ; it gives it a new and a nobler aspect. 
The gospel abolishes labor much in the 
same way as it abolishes death : it leaves 
the thing, but changes its nature. The 
gospel sweetens the believer's work : it 
gives him new motives for performing it. 
The gospel dignifies toil ; it transforms it 
from the drudgery of the workhouse or the 
penitentiary to the affectionate offices and 
joyful services of the fireside and the fam- 
ily circle. It asks us to do for the sake 
of Christ many things which we were once 
compelled to bear as a portion of the curse, 
and which worldly men perform for selfish 
and secondary reasons. " Whatsoever ye 
do in word or deed, do all in the name of 
the Lord Jesus. Wives, submit yourselves 
unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the 
Lord. Children, obey your parents in all 
things, for this is well-pleasing unto the 
Lord. Servants, obey in all things your 



f 



INDUSTRY. 23 

masters according to the flesh, not with eye- 
service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness 
of heart, fearing God ; and whatsoever ye 
do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not 
unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye 
shall receive the reward of the inheritance, 
for ye serve the Lord Christ." The gos- 
pel has not superseded diligence. " Study 
to be quiet and to do your own business, 
and to work with your own hands, as we 
commanded you. If any man will not work, 
neither let him eat." It is mentioned as 
almost the climax of sin — " And withal 
they learn to be idle, wandering about from 
house to house ; and not only idle, but tat- 
tlers also, and busy-bodies, speaking things 
which they ought not :" as, on the other 
hand, the healthy and right-conditioned 
state of a soul is — " Not slothful in busi- 
ness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." 

I. This precept is violated by those who 
have no business at all. By the bounty of 
God's providence, some are in such a situ- 
ation, that they do noT/.ncic o toil for a 



24 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

subsistence ; they go to bed when tney 
please, and get up when they can sleep no 
longer, and they do with themselves what- 
ever they like ; and though we dare not say 
that theirs is the happiest life, it certainly is 
the easiest. But it will neither be a lawful 
life nor a happy one, unless it have some 
work in hand, some end in view. Those 
of you who are familiar with the shore, may 
have seen attached to the inundated reef a 
creature — whether a plant or animal you 
could scarcely tell — rooted to the rock as a 
plant might be, and twirling its long ten- 
tacula as an animal would do. This plant- 
animal's life is somewhat monotonous, for 
it has nothing to do but grow and twirl its 
feelers, float in the tide, or fold itself up on 
its foot-stalk when that tide has receded, for 
months and years together. Now, would it 
not be very dismal to be transformed into a 
zoophyte ? Would it not be an awful pun- 
ishment, with your human soul still in you, 
to be anchored to a rock, able to do nothing 
but spin about your arms or fold them up 



INDUSTRY. ' 25 

again, and knowing no variety, except when 
the receding ocean left you in the daylight, 
or the returning waters plunged you into the 
green depths again, or the sweeping tide 
brought you the prize of a young periwin- 
kle or an invisible star-fish ? But what bet- 
ter is the life you are spontaneously lead- 
ing ? What greater variety marks your ex- 
istence, than chequers the life of the sea- 
anemone ? Does not one day float over 
you after another, just as the tide floats over 
it, and find you much the same, and leave 
you vegetating still ? Are you more useful ? 
What real service to others did you render 
yesterday ? What tangible amount of occu- 
pation did you overtake in the one hundred 
and sixty-eight hours of- which last week 
consisted ? And what higher end in living 
have you than that polypus ? You go 
through certain mechanical routines of ri- 
sing, and dressing, and visiting, and dining, 
and going to sleep again ; and are a little 
roused from your usual lethargy by the ar- 
rival of a friend, or the effort needed to 
3 



26 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

write some note of ceremony. But as it 
courtesies in the waves, and vibrates its 
exploring arms, and gorges some dainty me- 
dusa, the sea-anemone goes through nearly 
the same round of pursuits and enjoyments 
with your intelligent and immortal self. Is 
this a life for a rational and responsible 
creature to lead ? 

II. But this precept is also violated by 
those who are diligent in trifles — whose ac- 
tivity is a busy idleness. You may be very 
earnest in a pursuit which is utterly beneath 
your prerogative as an intelligent creature, 
and your high destination as an immortal 
being. Pursuits which are perfectly proper 
in creatures destitute of reason, may be very 
culpable in those who not only have reason, 
but are capable of enjoyments above the 
range of reason itself. We this instant im- 
agined a man retaining all his consciousness 
transformed into a zoophyte. Let us im- 
agine another similar transformation : fancy 
that instead of a polypus you were changed 
into a swallow. There you have a creature 



INDUSTRY, 27 

abundantly busy, up in the early morning, 
for ever on the wing, as graceful a>nd spright- 
ly in his flight as tasteful in the haunts 
which he selects. Look at him, zigzagging 
over the clover-field, skimming the limpid 
lake, whisking round the steeple, or dan- 
cing gayly in the sky. Behold him in high 
spirits, shrieking out his ecstasy as he has 
bolted a dragon-fly, or darted through the 
arrow-slits of the old turret, or performed 
some other feat of hirundine agility. And 
notice how he pays his morning visits — 
alighting elegantly on some housetop, and 
twittering politely by turns to the swallow 
on either side of him, and after five min- 
utes' conversation, off and away to call for 
his friend at the castle. And now he is 
gone upon his travels — gone to spend the 
winter at Rome or Naples, to visit Egypt 
or the Holy Land, or perform some more 
recherche pilgrimage to Spain or the coast 
of Barbary. And when he comes home 
next April, sure enough he has been abroad : 
charming climate — highly delighted with the 



28 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

cicadas m Italy, and the bees on Hymeltus 
— locusts in Africa rather scarce this sea- 
son ; but, upon the whole, much pleased 
with his trip, and returned in high health 
and spirits. Now, dear friends, this is a very 
proper life for a swallow, but is it a life for 
you ? To flit about from house to house ; 
to pay futile visits, where, if the talk were 
written down, it would amount to little more 
than the chattering of a swallow ; to bestow 
all your thoughts on graceful attitudes, and 
nimble movements, and polished attire ; to 
roam from land to land, with so little infor- 
mation in your head, or so little taste for 
the sublime or beautiful in your soul, that 
could a swallow publish his travels, and did 
you publish yours, we should probably find 
the one a counterpart of the other : the 
winged traveller enlarging on the discom- 
forts of his nest, and the wingless one on 
the miseries of his hotel or his chateau ; you 
describing the places of amusement, or en- 
larging on the vastness of the country, and 
the abundance of the game md your rival 



INDUSTRY. 29 

eloquent on the self-same thir.gs. Oh ! it 
is a thought — not ridiculous, but appalling. 
If the earthly history of some oi" our breth* 
ren were written down ; if a faithful record 
were kept of the way they spend their time ; 
if all the hours of idle vacancy or idler oc- 
cupancy were put together, and the very 
small amount of useful diligence deducted, 
the life of a* bird or quadruped would be a 
nobler one — more worthy of its powers and 
more equal to its Creator's end in forming 
it. Such a register is kept. Though the 
trifler does not chronicle his own vain words 
and wasted hours, they chronicle themselves. 
They find their indelible place in that book 
of remembrance with which human hand 
can not tamper, and from which no erasure 
save one can blot them. They are noted 
in the memory of God. And when once 
this life of wondrous opportunities and awful 
advantages is over — when the twenty or fifty 
years of probation are fled away — when 
mortal existence, with its facilities for per- 

soral improvement and serviceableness to 
3# 



30 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

others, is gone beyond recall — when the 
trifler looks back to the long pilgrimage, 
with all the doors of hope and doors of use* 
fulness, past which he skipped in his frisky 
forgetfulness — what anguish will it move to 
think that he has gambolled through such a 
world without salvation to himself, without 
any real benefit to his brethren, a busy tri- 
fler, a vivacious idler, a clever fool ! 

III. Those violate this precept who have 
a lawful calling, a proper business, but are 
slothful in it. When people are in business 
for themselves, they are in less risk of trans- 
gressing this injunction, though even there 
it sometimes happens that the haud is not 
diligent enough to make its owr\er rich. 
But it is when engaged in business, not fo? 
ourselves, but for others, or for God, thai 
we are in greatest danger of neglecting this 
rule. The servant who has no pleasure in 
his work, who does no more than wages 
can buy, or a legal agreement enforce ; the 
shopman who does not enter con amove into 
his employer's iiterest, and bestir himself 



NDUSTRY. 31 

to extend his trade as he would strive were 
*he concern his own ; the scholar who tri- 
fles when his teacher's eye is elsewhere, 
and who is content if he can only learn 
enough to escape disgrace ; the teacher who 
is satisfied if he can only convey a decent 
quantum of instruction, and wiio does not 
labor for the mental expansion and spiritual 
well-being of his pupils, as he would for 
/hose of his own children ; the magistrate or 
civic functionary who is only careful to es- 
cape public censure, and who does not la- 
bor to make the community richer, or hap- 
pier, or better, for his administration ; the 
minister who can give his energies to anoth- 
er cause than the cause of Christ, and neg- 
lect his Master's business in minding his 
own ; every one, in short, who performs the 
work which God or his brethren have given 
him to do in a hireling and perfunctory man- 
ner, is a violator of the Divine injunction, 
" Not slothful in business." There are some 
^persons of a dull and languid turn. They 
Crail sluggishly through life, as if some pain- 



I 



32 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ful viscus, some adhesive slime, weie clog- 
ging every movement, and making their 
snail-path a waste of their very substance* 
They do nothing with that healthy alacrity t . 
that gleesome energy, which bespeaks a 
sound mind even more than a vigorous body ; 
but they drag themselves to the inevitable 
task with remonstrating reluctance, as if ev- 
ery joint were set in a socket of torture, or 
as if they expected the quick flesh to cleave 
to the next implement of industry they han- 
dled. Having no wholesome love to work, 
no joyous delight in duty, they do every- 
thing grudgingly, in the most superficial 
manner, and at the latest moment. Others 
there are, who, if you find them at thei? 
post, you will find them dozing at it. They 
are a sort of perpetual somnambulists, walk- 
ing through their sleep ; moving in a con- 
stant mystery ; looking for their faculties? 
and forgetting what they are looking for ; 
not able to find their work, and when they 
have found their work, not able to find their 
hapds ; doing everything dreamily, and there?" 






INDUSTRY 33 

fore everything confusedly and incomplete- 
ly; their work a dream, their sleep a dream, 
not repose, not refreshment, but a slumber- 
ous vision of rest, a dreamy query concern- 
ing sleep ; too late for everything, taking 
their passage when the ship has sailed, in- 
suring their property when the house is 
burnt, locking the door when the goods are 
stolen — men whose bodies seem to have 
started in the race of existence before their 
minds were ready, and who are always ga- 
zing out vacantly as if they expected their 
wits were coming up by the next arrival. 
But, besides the sloths and the somnambu- 
lists, there is a third class — the day-dream- 
ers. These are a very mournful, because 
a self-deceiving generation. Like a man 
who has his windows glazed with yellow 
glass, and who can fancy a golden sunshine, 
or a mellow autumn on the fields, even when 
a wintry sleet is sweeping over them, the 
day-dreamer lives in an elysium of his own 
creating. With a foot on either side of the 
fi T e — with his chin on his bosom, and the 



34 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

wrong end of the book turned toward him — 
he can pursue his self-complacent musings 
till he imagines himself a traveller in un- 
known lands — the explorer of Central Afri- 
ca—the solver of all the unsolved problems 
in science — the author of some unprece- 
dented poem at which the wide world is 
wondering — or something so stupendous 
that he even begins to quail at his own glo- 
ry. The misery is, that while nothing is 
done toward attaining the greatness, his lux- 
urious imagination takes its possession for 
granted : $nd w T ith his feet on the fender, he 
fancies himself already on the highest pin- 
nacle of fame ; and a still greater misery is, 
that the time thus wasted in unprofitable 
musings, if spent in honest application and 
down right working, would go very far to 
carry him where his sublime imagination 
fain would be. It would not be easy to 
estimate the good of which day-dreams 
have defrauded the world. Some of the 
finest intellects have exhaled away m this 
sluggish evaporation, and left no vestige ou 



INDUSTRY. 35 

earth except the dried froth, the obscure 
film, which survives the drivel of vanished 
dreams ; and others have done just enough 
to show how important they would have 
been had they awaked sooner or kept long- 
er awake at once. Sir James Macintosh 
was an example of the latter class. His 
castle-building " never amounted to convic- 
tion ; in other words, these fancies have nev- 
er influenced my actions ; but I must con- 
fess that they have often been as steady and 
of as regular recurrence as conviction itself, 
and that they have sometimes created a little 
faint expectation, a state of mind in which 
my wonder that they should be realized 
would not be so great as it rationally ought 
to be."* Perhaps no one in modern times 
has been capable of more sagacious or com- 
prehensive generalizations in those sciences 
which hold court in the high places of hu- 
man intellect than he ; but a few hints and a 
fragment of finished work are all that remain 
Coleridge never sufficiently woke up from 
* Life, vol. L, p. £» 



36 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

his long life-dream to articulate distinctly 
any of the glorious visions which floated be- 
fore his majestic fancy, some of which we 
really believe that the world would have 
been the wiser for knowing. And, return- 
ing from secular philosophy to matters of 
Christian practice, has the reader never met 
those w T hose superior gifts would have mad* 3 
them eminently useful, and who had designs 
of usefulness, perhaps philanthropic schemes 
of peculiar ingenuity and beauty, but who 
are passing away from earth, if they have 
not passed away already, without actually 
attempting any tangible good ? And yet so 
sincere are they in their own inoperative be- 
nevolence, so hard do they toil and sw T eat 
in their own Nephelococcygia, that nothing 
could surprise them more than the question, 
" What do ye more than others ?" unless it 
were their own inability to point out the 
solid product, and lay their hands on the 
actual results. To avoid this guilt and 
wretchedness — 

1. Have a business in which diligence is 



INDUSTRY. 37 

lawful a.id desirable. There are some pur-, 
suits which do not deserve to be called y 
business. iEropus was the king of Mace 
donia, and it was his favorite pursuit to make 
lanterns.* Probably he was very good at 
making them, but his proper ousiness was 
to be a king ; and therefore the more lan- 
terns he made, the worse king he was. And 
if your work be a high calling, you must not 
dissipate your energies on trifles — on things 
which, lawful in themselves, are still as ir- 
relevant to you as lamp-making is irrelevant 
to a king. Perhaps some here are without 
any specific calling. They have neither a 
farm nor a merchandise to look after ; they 
have no household to care for, no children 
to train and educate, no official duties to 
engross their time ; they have an indepen- 
dent fortune, and live at large. My friends, 
I congratulate you on your wealth, your 

* Quoted in Todd's Student's Guide (chap, v.)— a 
book which no zealous student will read without be- 
hg animated by its vigorous tone, and instructed by 
its wise and practical suggestions. 

4 



38 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

liberal education, your position in society, 
and your abundant leisure. It is in your 
power to be the benefactors of your genera- 
tion ; you are in circumstances to do an 
eminent service for God and finish some 
great work before vour goino; hence. What 
that work shall be, I do not attempt to in- 
dicate '; I rather leave it for your own inves- 
tigation and discovery. Every one has his 
own line of things. Howard chose one path, 
and Wilberforce another ; Harlan Page 
chose one, and Brainerd Tailor another. 
Mrs. Fletcher did one work, Lady Glenor- 
chy another, and Mary Jane Graham a third. 
Every one did the work for which God had 
best fitted them, but each made that work 
their business. They gave themselves to it ; 
they not only did it, by-the-by, but they se- 
lected it and set themselves in earnest to it, 
not parenthetically, but on very p urpose — the 
problem of their lives — for Christ's sake and 
in Christ's service, and held themselves as 
bound to do it as if they had been by him- 
self expressly engagea for it. And, breth- 



INDUSTRY. 39 

ren, you mast do the same. Those of vou 
who do not need to toil for your daily bread, 
your very leisure is a hint what the Lord 
would have you to do. As you have no 
business of your own, he would have you 
devote yourselves to his business ; he would 
have you carry on, in some of its manifold 
departments, that work which he came to 
earth to do. He would have you go about 
his Father's business as he was wont to be 
about it. And if you still persist in living 
to yourselves, you can not be happy. You 
can not spend all your days in making pin- 
cushions, or reading newspapers, or loiter- 
ing in club-rooms and coffee-houses, and 
yet be happy. If you profess to follow 
Christ, this is not a Christian life. It is not 
a conscientious, and so it can not be a com- 
fortable life. And if the pin-cushion or the 
newspaper fail to make you happy, remem- 
ber the reason — very good as relaxations, 
ever so great an amount of these things can 
never be a business, and " wist ye not that you 
should be about your Father's business 2" 



40 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

2. Having made a wise and deliberate 
selection of a business, go on with it — go 
through with it. Persevering mediocrity 
is much more respectable, and unspeakably 
more useful, than talented inconstancy. In 
the heathery turf you will often find a planl 
chiefly remarkable for its peculiar roots ' 
from the main stem down to the minutest 
fibre, you will find them all abruptly terminate 
as if shorn or bitten off; and the silly super- 
stition of the country people alleges that 
once on a time it was a plant of singular 
potency for healing all sorts of maladies, 
and therefore the great enemy of man in his 
malignity bit off the roots in which its vir- 
tues resided. This plant, with this quaint 
history, is a very good emblem of many 
well-meaning but little-effecting people 
They might be defined as radicibus prce- 
morsis, or rather inceptis sn^isis. The effi- 
cacy of every good work lies in iJs comple- 
tion : and all their good works terminate ab- 
ruptly, and are left off unfinished. The 
devil frustrates their efficacy by cutting off 



INDUSTRY. 41 

their ends ; their unprofitable history is made 
up of plans and projects, schemes of useful- 
ness that were never gone about, and mag- 
nificent undertakings that were never carried 
forward ; societies that were set agoing, then 
left to shift for themselves, and forlorn beings 
who for a time were taken up and instruct- 
ed, and just when they were beginning to 
show symptoms of improvement, were cast 
on the world again. But others there are, 
who, before beginning to build, count the 
cost, and having collected their materials, 
and laid their foundations deep and broad, 
go on to rear their structure, indifferent to 
more tempting schemes and sublime enter- 
prises subsequently suggested. The man 
who provides a home for a poor neighbor, 
is a greater benefactor of the poor than he 
who lays the foundation of a stately alms- 
house and never finishes a single apartment. 
The persevering teacher who guides one 
child into the saving knowledge of Christ 
and leads him on to established habits of 
piety, is a more useful man than his friend 
4# 



42 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

who gathers in a roOm-full of ragged chil- 
dren, and after a few weeks of w T aning zeal- 
turns them all adrift on the streets again. 
The patriot who set his heart on abolishing 
the slave-trade, and after twenty years of 
rebuffs and revilings, of tantalized hope and 
disappointed effort, at last succeeded — 
achieved a greater work than if he had set 
afloat all possible schemes of philanthropy, 
and then left them, one after the other, to 
sink or swim. So short is life, that we can 
afford to lose none of it in abortive under- 
takings ; and once we are assured that a 
given work is one which it is worth our while 
to do, it is true wisdom to set about it in- 
stantly, and once we have begun it, it is 
true ecoi lorny to finish it. 



INDUSTRY. 43 



LECTURE II. 

INDUSTRY. 

14 Not slothful in business." — Homans xii. 11. 

This morning we saw how this precept 
is violated by various descriptions of per- 
sons : by those who have no business at all, 
and those whose business is only an active 
idleness : and, finally, by those who, having 
a lawful business — a good and honorable 
work assigned them — do it reluctantly or 
drowsily, or leave it altogether undone. 

There are some who have no business at 

all. They are of no use in the world ; they 

are doing no good, and attempting none ; 

and when they are taken out of the world, 

4* 



41 LIFE IX EARN T E5T 

Jieir removal creates no vacancy. When 
an oak or any noble and useful tree is up- 
rooted, his removal creates a blank. For 
years after, when you look to the place 
which once knew him, you see that some- 
thing is missing. The branches of adjacent 
trees have not yet supplied the void. They 
still hesitate to occupy the place formerly 
filled by their powerful neighbor; and there 
is still a deeo chasm in the ground — a rug- 
ged pit — which shows how far his giant 
roots once spread. But when a leafless 
pole, a wooden pin, is plucked up, it comes 
easy and clean away. There is no rending 
of the turf, no marring of the landscape, no 
vacuity created, no regret. It leaves no me- 
mento, and is never missed. Now. breth- 
ren, which are you? Are you cedars, plant* 
ed in the house of the Lord, casting a cool 
and grateful shadow on those around you? 
Are you palm-trees, fat and flourishing, 
yielding bounteous fruit, and making all 
who know you bless you ? Are you so 
useful, that, were you once away, it would 



INDUSTRY. 45 

not be easy to fill your place again : but peo- 
ple, as they pointed to the void in the plan- 
tation — the pit in the ground — would say, 
" It was here that that brave cedar grew : 
it was here that that old palm-tree diffused 
his familiar shadow and showered his mel- 
low clusters ?" Or are you a peg — a pin 
-—a rootless, branchless, fruitless thing that 
maybe pulled up any day, and no one ever 
care to ask what has become of it ? What 
are you doing ? What are you contributing 
to the world's happiness, or the church's 
glory ? What is your business ? 

Individuals there are who are doing 
something, though it would be difficult to 
specify what. They are busy ,; but it is a 
busy idleness. 

" Their only labor is to kill the time, 
And labor dire it is, and weary wo. 
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, 
Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow : 
This soon too rude an exercise they find — 
Straight on the couch their limbs again they throw, 
Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclined, 
And court the vapory god soft-breathing ir he 
wind." — Castle of Indolence, 



46 LIFE N EARN£bf. 

They think that they are busy, though 
their chief business be to get quit of them- 
selves. To annihilate time, to quiet con- 
science, to banish care, to keep ennui out 
at one door, and serious thoughts out at 
the other, gives them all their occupation. 
And, betwixt their fluttering visits and 
frivolous engagements, their midnight di- 
versions, their haggard mornings, and short- 
ened days, their yawning attempts at read- 
ing, and sulky application to matters of 
business which they can not well evade ; 
betwixt mobs of callers and shoals of cere- 
monious notes, they fuss and fret them- 
selves into the pleasant belief that they are 
the most worried and hard-driven of mortal 
men. Even when groaning in prospect of 
interminable hours they have not a moment 
to spare ; and a chief employment of their 
leisure is to appear in a constant hurry. 
Could you embody in matter-of-fact all 
their sham activity and bustling show, could 
you write down a truthful enumeration of 
the doings of a single week, I fear there 



INDUSTRY. 47 

would not be found one net which, were 
He saying, " Thou fool, this night shall 
thy soul be required of thee," the Judge 
of all would accept as a right deed or right- 
ly done. It is possible to be very busy, 
and yet very idle. It is possible to be se- 
rious about trifles, and to exhaust one's en- 
ergies in doing nothing. It is possible to 
be toiling all one's days in doing that which, 
in the infatution of fashion or the delirium 
of ambition, will look exceedingly august 
and important ; but which the first flash of 
eternity will transmute into shame and ever- 
lasting contempt. 

Then, among those who have really got 
a work to do — whose calling is lawful or 
something more — perhaps a direct vocation 
in the service of God, there are three classes 



who violate the precept of the text— those 
who do their work grudgingly, or drowsily, 
or not at all — the sloths, the somnambulists, 
and the day-dreamers. Some do it grudg- 
ingly. They have not a heart for work ; 
and of all work, least heart for that which 



48 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

God has given them. Instead of that an- 
gelic alacrity which speeds instinctively on 
the service God assigns, that healthy love 
of labor which a loyal and well-conditioned 
soul would have, they postpone everything 
to the latest moment, and then go whim- 
pering and growling to the hated task as if 
they were about to undergo some dismal 
punishment. They have a strange idea of 
occupation. They look on it as a drug, a 
penalty, a goblin, a fiend, something very 
fierce and cruel, something very nauseous ; 
and they would gladly smuggle through ex- 
istence by one of those side-paths which 
the grim giants, labor and industry, do not 
guard. 

Others again, who do not quite refuse 
their work, put only half a soul into it. 
They have no zeal for their profession. 
They somehow scramble through it ; but it 
is without any noble enthusiasm — any ap- 
petite for work or any love to the God who 
gives it. If they are intrusted with the 
property of others, they can not boast as 



INDUSTRY. 49 

Jacob did ; ' In the day the drought con- 
sumed me, and the frost by night ; and my 
sleep departed from mine eyes. God hath 
seen mine affliction and the labor of my 
hands." If intrusted with the souls of others, 
they can not reckon up " the abundant labors, 
the often journeyings, the weariness and 
painfulness, the watchings, the hunger and 
thirst," the perils and privations which, for 
the love of his Master and his Master's work, 
the Apostle of the Gentiles joyfully encoun 
tered. If scholars, they are content to learn 
the lesson, so that no fault shall be found. 
If servants, they aspire to nothing more 
than fulfilling their inevitable toils. And if 
occupying official stations, they are satisfied 
with a decent discharge of customary duties, 
and are glad if they leave things no worse 
than they found them. They are hireling, 
perfunctory, heartless in all they do. Their 
work is so sleepily done that it is enough 
to make you lethargic to labor in their com- 
pany ; and, before they go zealously and 
wakefully to work, they w r ould need to be 
5 



50 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

startled up into the daylight of actual ex* 
istence — they would need to be shaken 
from that torpor into which the very sight 
of labor is apt to entrance them. Oh, hap- 
pier far, to los°. health and life itself in clear, 
brisk, conscious working; to spend the last 
atom of strength, and yield the vital spark 
itself in joyful wakeful efforts for Him who 
did all for us — than to drawl through a 
dreaming life, with all the fatigue of labor and 
nothing of its sweetness ; snoring in a con- 
stant lethargy, sleeping while you work, and 
nightmared with labor when you really sleep. 
And, besides the procrastinating and per- 
functory class, those are " slothful in busi- 
ness" who do no business at all. And 
there are such persons — agreeable, self- 
complacent, plausible persons — who really 
fancy that they have done a great deal be- 
cause they have intended to do so much. 
Their life is made up of good purposes, 
splendid projects, and heroic resolutions. 
They live in the region which th* poet hag 
described : — 



INDUSTRY. 5] 

"A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, 
Ol* dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, 
And cf gay casties in the clouds that pass, 
For ever flushing round a summer's sky." 

i 

They have performed so many journeys, 
and made so many discoveries, and won so 
many laurels in this aerial clime, that life 
is over, and they find their real work is not 
begun. Like the dreamer who is getting 
great sums of money in his sleep, and who, 
when he awakes, opens his till or his pocket- 
book, almost expecting to find it full, the 
day-dreamer, the projector awaking up at 
the close of life, can hardly believe that 
after his distinct and glorious visions, he is 
leaving the world no wiser, mankind no 
richer, and his own home no happier, for 
all the golden prospects which have flitted 
through his busy brain. What a blessed 
world it were, how happy and how rich, if 
all the idlers were working, if all the work* 
ers were awake, and if all the projectors 
were practical men ! 

I trust, my friends, that many among 



52 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

you are desirous to be active Christians 
Perhaps the following hints may be helpful 
to those who wish to serve the Lord by 
diligence in business. 

1. Have a calling in which it is worth 
while to be busy. There are many call- 
ings in which it is lawful for the Christian 
to " abide." He may be a lawyer like Sir 
Matthew Hale, or a physician like Haller, 
Heberden, and Mason Goode. He may 
be a painter like West, or a sculptor like 
Bacon, or a poet like Milton, and Klop- 
stock, and Cowper. He may be a trader 
like Thornton and the Hardcastles, or a 
philosopher like Boyle and Boerhaave. He 
may be a hard-working artisan like the 
Yorkshire Blacksmith and the Watchmaker 
of Geneva; or he may toil for his daily 
bread like the Happy Waterman, and the 
Wallsend Miner, and the Shepherd of 
Salisbury Plain, and many a domestic ser- 
vant of humble but pious memory. And 
the business of this ordinary calling, the 
disciple of Christ must discharge heartily, 



INDUSTRY. 53 

and with all bis might. He must labor to 
be eminent and exemplary in bis own pro- 
fession. He should seek, for the sake of 
the Gospel, to hejirst-ratc in his own de- 
partment. But. over and above his ordinary 
calling as a member of society, the believer 
has his special calling as a member of the 
church. lie has a direct work to do in 
his Savior's service. Some who now hear 
me have so much of their time at their own 
disposal, that they might almost make their 
calling as members of Christ's church the 
business of their lives. And each who is 
in this privileged situation should consider 
what is the particular line of things for 
which his taste and talents most urgently 
predispose him, and for which his training 
and station best adapt him. The healthiest 
condition of the church is where there is a 
member for every office, and where every 
member fulfils his own office,* where there 
are no defects and no transpositions, but 
each is allowed to ply to the utmost the 
* Rom. xii. 3-8. 



54 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

\y<}r\ for which God has intended him , 
where Newton writes his letters, and Butler 
his analogy; where in the leisure of the 
olden ministry, Matthew Henry compiles 
his commentary, and where in the calm re- 
treat of Olney, Cowper pours forth his de- 
votional melodies ; where Venn cultivates 
his corner of the vineyard, and Whitefield 
ranges over the field of the world ; where 
President Edwards is locked up in his 
study, and Wilberforce is detained in the 
parlor; where the adventurous Carey goes 
down into the pit, and the sturdy arm of 
Fuller deals out the rope ; where he w T ho 
ministers waits on his ministering, and he 
that teacheth on teaching, and he that ex- 
horteth on exhortation, and he who hath to 
give gives liberally, and he who has method 
and good management rules diligently, and 
he who can pay visits of mercy pays them 
cheerfully. And if the Lord has given you 
an abundance of unoccupied leisure, he has 
along witb it given you some talent or 
other, and says, " Occupy till I come.' 1 



INDUSTRY.. 55 

Find out what it is that you best can do, or 
what it is which, if you neglect it, is likely 
to be left undone. And whether you select 
as your sphere of Christian usefulness, a 
sabbath class or a ragged school, a local 
prayer-meeting, or a district for domiciliary 
visitation ; whether you devote yourself to 
the interests of some evangelistic society, or 
labor secretly from house to house, what- 
ever line of things you select, make it your 
" business." Pursue it so earnestly, that 
though it were only in that one field of ac- 
tivity you w T ould evince yourself no com- 
mon Christian. 

2. Make the most of time. Some have 
little leisure, but there are sundry expedi- 
ents, any one of which, if fairly tried, would 
make that little leisure longer. (1.) Econ- 
omy. Most of the men who have died 
enormously rich, acquired their wealth, not 
in huge windfalls, but by minute and care- 
ful accumulations. It was not one vast 
sum bequeathed to them after another, 
which overwhelmed them with inevitable 



56 LII E IN EARNEST. 

opulence ; but it was the loose money which 
most men would avish away, the little sums 
which manv would not deem worth looking 
after, the pennies and half-crowns of which 
you would keep no reckoning, these are the 
items which year by year piled up, have 
reared their pyramid of fortune. From 
these money-makers let us learn the nobler 
" avarice of time/' A German critic could 
repeat the Iliad in Greek. How many 
weeks did he bestow on the task of com- 
mitting it to memory ? He had no weeks 
to spare for such a purpose, for he was a 
physician in busy practice ; but he con- 
trived to master it all during the brief 
snatches of lime when passing from one 
patient's door to another.* In the life of 
Dr. Mason Good, a feat of similar industry 

* A similar instance of literary industry is recorded 
of Dr. Burney, the musician. With the help of 
pocket grammars and dictionaries, winch he had La ken 
the trouble to write out for his own use, he acquired 
the French and Italian languages when riding on 
horseback from place to place to give his professional 
instructions. 



INDUSTRY. 5? 

;s recorded. ' His translation of Lucretius 
was composed in the streets of London, 
during his extensive walks to visit his nu- 
merous patients. His practice was to take 
in his pocket two or three leaves of an oc- 
tavo edition of the original ; to read over a 
passage two or three times as he walked 
along, until he had engraven it upon his 
ready memory ; then to translate the pas- 
sage, meditate upon the translation, correct 
and elaborate it, until he had satisfied him- 
self." Proceeding in the same way with a 
second, a third, and fourth passage, he en- 
tered the translation on his manuscript, af- 
ter he had returned home, and disposed of 
all his professional business. And in order 
to achieve some good work which you have 
much at heart, you may not be able to se- 
cure an entire week, or even an uninter- 
rupted day. But try w T hat you can make 
of the broken fragments of time. Glean up 
its golden dust; those raspings and parings 
of precious duration, those leavings of days 
sad remnants of hours which so many 



58 LlFt: IN EARNEST. 

sweep out into the waste of existence* 
Perhaps, if you be a miser of moments, if 
you be frugal and hoard up odd minutes, 
and half-hours, and unexpected holydays, 
your careful gleanings may eke out a long 
and useful life, and you may die at last 
richer in existence than multitudes whose 
time is all their own. The time which some 
men w T aste in superfluous slumber, and idle 
visits, and desultory application, were it all 
redeemed, would give them wealth of 
leisure, and enable them to execute under- 
takings for which they deem a less worried 
life than theirs essential. When a person 
says, " I have no time to pray, no time to 
read the Bible, no time to improve my 
mind, nor to do a kind turn to a neighbor,' 9 
he may be saying what he thinks, but he 
should not think what he says ; for if he has 
not got the time already, he may get it by 
redeeming it. (2.) Punctuality. A singu- 
lar mischance has occurred to some of 0U* 
friends. At the instant when he usnered 
thani on 'existence, God gave them a work 



INDUSTRY. 59 

Co do, and he also gave them a competency 
of time, so much time, that, if they began at 
the right moment, and wrought with sufficient 
vigor, their time and their work would end 
together. But a good many years ago a 
strange misfortune befell them. A fragment 
of their allotted time was lost. They can 
.not tell what became of it, but sure enough 
it has dropped out of existence ; for, just 
like two measuring-lines laid alongside, the 
one an inch shorter than the other, then 
work and their time run parallel, but the 
work is always ten minutes in advance of 
the time. They are not irregular. They 
are never too soon. Their letters are posted 
the very minute after the mail is shut ; they 
arrive at the wharf just in time to see the 
steamboat off; they come in sight of the 
erminus precisely as the station-gates are 
closing. They do not break any engage- 
ment nor neglect any duty ; but they sys- 
tematically go about it too late, and usually 
too late by about the ime fatal interval. 
How can they retrieve a lost fragment, so 



60 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

essential to character and comfort? Per- 
haps by a device like this : suppose that on 
some auspicious morning they contrived to 
rise a quarter of an hour before their usual 
time, and were ready for their morning 
worship fifteen minutes sooner than they 
have been for the last ten years ; or, what 
will equally answer the end, suppose that 
for once they merged their morning meal 
•altogether, and went straight out to the en- 
gagements of the day ; suppose that they 
arrived at the class-room, or the work-shop, 
or the place of business, fifteen minutes be- 
fore their natural time, or that they forced 
themselves to the appointed rendezvous on 
the week-day, or to the sanctuary on the 
sabbath-day, a quarter of an hour before 
their instinctive time of going, all would yet 
be well. This system carried out would 
bring the world and themselves to synchro- 
nize ; they and the marching hours would 
come to keep step again, and moving on 
in harmony, they would escape the jolting 
awkwardness and fatigue they used to feel. 



INDUSTRY. 61 

when old Father Time put the right foot 
foremost and they advanced the left ; their 
reputation would be retrieved, and friends 
who at present fret would begin to smile ; 
their fortunes would be made ; their satis- 
faction in their work would be doubled ; 
and their influence over others and their 
power for usefulness would be unspeakably 
augmented. (3.) Method. A man has got 
twenty or thirty letters and packets to carry 
to their several destinations ; but instead of 
arranging them beforehand, and putting all 
addressed to the same locality in a separate 
parcel, he crams the whole into his pro- 
miscuous bag, and trudges off to the West 
End, for he knows that he has got a letter 
directed thither : that letter he delivers, and 
hies away to the City, when lo ! the same 
handful which brings out the invoice for 
Cheapside, contains a brief for the Temple, 
and a parliamentary petition, which should 
have been left, had he noticed it earlier, at 
Belgrave Square ; accordingly he retraces 
his-steps and repairs the omission, and then 
6 



62 LIFE IX EARNEST. 

performs a transit from Paddington to Beth- 
rial Green — till in two days lie overtakes the 
work of one, and travels fifty miles to ao 
complish as much as a man of method 
would have managed in fifteen. The man 
who has thoroughly mastered that lesson — 
" A place for everything, and everything in 
its own place" — will save a world of time. 
He loses no leisure seeking for the unan- 
swered letter or the lost receipt ; he does 
not need to travel the same road twice ; and 
hence it is that some of the busiest men 
have the least of a busy look. Instead of 
slamming doors, and ringing alarm-bells, 
and knocking over chairs and children in 
their headlong hurry, they move about de- 
liberately, for they have made their calcula- 
tions, and know that they have ample time. 
And just as a prodigal of large fortune is 
obliged to do shabby things, while an order- 
ly man of moderate income has always an 
easy look, as if there were still something 
left in his pocket — as he can afford to pay 
for goods when he buys them, and to puf 



INDUSTRY. 63 

something into the collecting-box when it 
passes him, and after he has discharged all 
his debts has still something to spare — so is 
it with the methodical husbanders and the 
disorderly spendthrifts of time. Those who 
live without a plan have never any leisure, 
for their work is never done : those who time 
their engagements and arrange* their work 
beforehand, can bear an occasional inierrup- 
tion. They can reserve an evening hour for 
their families ; they can sometimes take a 
walk into the country, or drop in to see a 
friend ; they can now and then contrive to 
read a useful book ; and amid all their im- 
portant avocations, they have a tranquil and 
opulent appearance, as if they still had plen- 
ty of time. (4.) Promptitude. Every scene 
of occupation is haunted by that " thief of 
time," procrastination ; and all his ingenuity 
is directed to steal that best of opportuni- 
ties, the present time. The disease of hu- 
manity, disinclination to the work God has 
given, more frequently takes the form of 
dilatoriness than a downright and decided 



64 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

refusal. But delay shortens life and abridg- 
es industry, just as promptitude enlarges 
both. You have a certain amount of work 
before you, and in all likelihood some un- 
expected engagements may be superadded 
as the time wears on. You may begin that 
work immediately, or you may postpone it 
till the evening, or till the week be closing, 
or till near the close of life. Your sense of 
duty insists on its being done ; but procras- 
tination says, " It will be pleasanter to do 
it by-and-by." What infatuation ! to end 
each day in a hurry, and life itself in a pan- 
ic ! and when the flurried evening has closed, 
and the fevered life is over, to leave half 
your work undone ! Whatever the business 
be, do it instantly, if you would do it easily : 
life will be long enough for the work as- 
signed, if you be prompt enough. Clear 
off arrears of neglected duty ; and once the 
disheartening accumulations of the past are 
overtaken, let not that mountain of difficulty 
rise again. Prefer duty to diversion, and 
cultivate that athletic frame of soul which 



INDUSTRY C5 

rejoices in abundant occupation ; and you 
will soon find the sweetness of that repose 
which follows finished work, and the zest of 
that recreation in which no delinquent feeling 
mingles, and on which no neglected duty 
frowns. 



66 LIFE IN EARNEST 



LECTURE I.I. 

AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 
M Serving the Lord." — Romans xii. 11. 

u Serving- the Lord." The title which 
James and Jude take to themselves at the 
outset of their epistles is, " James — Jude — 
a servant of Jesus Christ." The original 
is more forcible still. In the inscriptions of 
these epistles, as well as in this passage, a 
true and emphatic rendering would be, " a 
slave of Jesus Christ ;" — " Not slothful in 
business, fervent in spirit, the Lord's bond" 
men" The believer is the happy captive 
of Jesus Christ ; he has fastened on himself 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 67 

Immanuel's easy yoke, the light burden and 
delicious chains of a Savior's love ; and 
though Christ says, " Henceforth I call you 
no more servants," the disciple can not give 
up the designation ; there is no other term 
by which, at times, he can express that feel- 
ing of intense devotedness and self-surren- 
der which fills his loyal bosom. " Truly, 
O Lord, I am thy servant, and the son of 
thy handmaid." And far from feeling any 
ignominy in the appellation, there are times 
when no name of Jesus sounds sweeter in 
his ear than " Jesus, my Lord ! Jesus, my 
Master !" and when no designation more 
accords with his feeling of entire devoted- 
ness, than James, a servant, Jude, a slave 
of Jesus Christ, David, a bondsman of the 
Lord. There are times when the believer 
has such adoring views of his Savior's ex- 
cellency, and such affecting views of his 
Savior's claims, that rather than refuse one 
requirement, he only grudges that the yoke 
is so easy that he can scarcely perceive it, 
the burden so light that he can scarcely rec 



68 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

dgnise himself as a servant. He would like 
something which would identify him more 
closely with his beloved Savior, some open 
badge that he might carry, and which would 
say for him — 

" I'm not ashamed to own my Lord." 

If Christ would bore his ear to the door 
post — if Christ would only give him out of 
his own hand his daily task to do — he would 
like it well ; and ceasing to be the servant 
of men, he would fain become the servant 
of Jesus Christ. 

And going to the Savior in this ardent 
mood of mind, and saying, " Lord, what 
wouldst thou have me to do ?" the Savior 
hands you back the Bible. He accepts you 
for his servant, and he directs you what ser- 
vice he would have you to perform. The 
hook which he gives you is as really the 
directory of Christ's servants as is the sealed 
paper of instructions which the commander 
of an expedition takes with him when he 
goes to sea, or the letter of directions which 



AN EYE TO THE 1.0RD JESUS. 69 

the absent nobleman sends to the steward 
on his estates or the servant in his house. 
The only difference is, its generality. In- 
stead of making out a separate copy for 
your specific use, indicating the different 
things which he would have you do from 
day to day, and sending it direct to your- 
self, authenticated by his own autograph, 
and by the precision and individuality of its 
details, evidently designed for yourself ex- 
clusively — the volume of his will is of a 
wider aspect and more miscellaneous char- 
acter. It effectually anticipates each step 
of your individual history, and prescribes 
each act of your personal duty ; but inter- 
mingling these with matters of promiscuous 
import, it leaves abundant scope for your 
honesty and ingenuity to find out the pre- 
cise things which your Lord would have 
you to do. Had it been otherwise — had 
there been put into the hand of each disci- 
ple, the moment he professed his faith in 
Christ, a sealed paper of instructions, con- 
taining an enumeration of the special ssr- 



70 LIFE IX EARNEST 

vices which his Lord would Lave this new 
disciple to render, prescribing a certain 
number of tasks which he expected that dis- 
ciple to perform, and specifying the very 
way in which he would have them done — 
in proportion as this directory was precise 
and rigid, so would it cease to be the test 
of fidelity, so w^ould it abridge the limits 
within which an unrestricted loyalty may 
display itself. As it is, the directory is so 
plain, that he who runs may read : uot so 
plain, however, but that he who stai.ds still 
and ponders will find a great deal which the 
runner could not read. It is so perempto- 
ry, that no man can call Jesus L(ud without 
doing the things which it commands ; but 
withal so general, as to leave many things 
to the candor and cordiality o( so : md-heart- 
ed disciples. It is precise enough to indi- 
cate the tempers, and the graces, and the 
good works, with which the Savior is well 
pleased, and by which the Father is glori- 
fied : but it nowhere fixes the exact amount 
of any one of these, short of which Christ 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 71 

will not suffer a disciple to stop, or beyond 
which lie does not expect a disciple to go. 
The Bible does not deal in maximums and 
mini mums ; it does not weigh and measure 
out by definite proportions the ingredients 
of regenerate character , but it specifies what 
these ingredients are, and leaves it to the 
zeal of each believer to add to his faith, not 
as many, but as much of each of these things 
as he pleases. Firmly averring, on the one 
hand, that without each and all of these 
graces a man can not belong to Christ, it, 
on the other hand, omits to specify how 
much of each a man must be able to pro- 
duce before Jesus say to him, " Well done, ' 
good and faithful servant ; enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord." The Bible announ- 
ces those qualities which a man must have, 
in order to prove him born from above ; but 
it does not tell what quantity of each he must 
exhibit, in order to secure the smile of his 
Master, and an abundant entrance into his 
heavenly kingdom. By this defmiteness on 
the outward side, it leaves no room for hy- 



72 LIFE iN EARNEST. 

pocrisy ; but, by this indefiniteness on the 
inner side, it leaves large place for the works, 
and service, and faith, and patience — the 
filial enterprise, the affectionate voluntaries, 
and free-will offerings — of those who'know 
no limit to their labors, except the limit of 
their love to Christ. 

You will observe, that at the time when 
you become a disciple of Christ, your Lord 
and Master takes the whole domain of your 
employments under his own jurisdiction. 
He requires you to consecrate your ordina- 
ry calling to him, and to do, over and above, 
many special things expressly for himself. 
Whatsoever you do, in word or deed, he 
desires that you should do it in his name 
not working like a worldling, and praying 
like a Christian, but both in work and pray- 
er, both in things secular and things sacred, 
setting himself before you, carrying out his 
rules, and seeking to please him. One is 
your Master, even Christ, and he is your 
master in everything — the master of your 
thoughts, your words, your family arrange- 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 73 

ments, your business transactions — the mas- 
ter of your working time, as well as of your 
sabbath-clay — the Lord of your shop and 
counting-room, as well as of your closet and 
your pew — because the Lord of your affec- 
tions, the proprietor of your very self be- 
sides* The Christian is one who may do 
many things from secondary motives — from 
the pleasure they afford his friends — from 
the gratification they give to his own tastes 
and predilections — from his abstract convic- 
tions of what, is honest, lovely, and of good 
report ; but his main and predominant mo- 
tive — that which is paramount over every 
other, and which, when fully presented, is 
conclusive against every other — is affection 
for his heavenly Friend. One is his Mas- 
ter, even Christ, and the love of Christ con- 
straineth him. 

Look now at the advantages of a motive 
like this. See how loyalty to Christ secures 
diligence in business — whether that be busi- 
ness strictly religious or business more mis* 
cellaneous. 

7 



74 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

1. Love to Christ is an abiding motive. 
It is neither a fancy, nor a sentiment, nor 
an evanescent emotion. It is a principle—* 
calm, steady, undecaying. It was once a 
problem in mechanics to find a pendulum 
which should be equally long in all weath- 
ers — which should make the same number 
of vibrations in the summer's heat and in the 
winter's cold. They have now found it 
out. By a process of compensations they 
make the rod lengthen one w T ay as much as 
it contracts another, so that the centre of 
motion is always the same : the pendulum 
swings the same number of beats in a day 
of January as in a day of June ; and the in- 
dex travels over the dial-plate with the same 
uniformity, whether the heat try to lengthen 
or the cold to shorten the propelling power. 
Now the moving power in some men's minds 
is sadly susceptible of surrounding influen- 
ces. It is not principle, but feeling, which 
forms their pendulum-rod ; and according 
as this very variable materiel is affected, 
their index creeps or gallops they are swift 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 73 

or slow in the work given them to do. But 
principle is like the compensation-rod, which 
neither lengthens in the languid heat, nor 
shortens in the brisker cold ; but does the 
same work day by day, whether the ice- 
winds whistle, or the simoom glows. Of 
all principles, a high-principled affection to 
the Savior is the steadiest and most secure. 
Other incentives to action are apt to alter or 
lose their influence altogether. You once 
did many things for the sake of friends whose 
wishes expressed or understood were your 
incentive, and whose ready smile was your 
recompense. But that source of activity is 
closed. Those friends are now gone where 
your industry can not enrich them, nor your 
kindness comfort them. Or if they remain, 
they are no longer the same that once they 
were. The magic light has faded from off 
them. The mysterious interest which hov- 
ered round them has gone up like a moun- 
tain-mist, and left them in their wintry cold- 
ness or natural ruggedness : no longer those 
whom once you took them to be, Or you 



76 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

did many things for fame ; and were well 
requited for a winter's work when the ho- 
sanna of a tumultuous assembly, or the psean 
of a newspaper paragraph, proclaimed you 
die hero of the hour. But even that sort 
of satisfaction has passed away, and, meager 
diet as these plaudits always were, you stand 
on the hungry pinnacle, and, like other as- 
pirants of the same desert-roaming school * 
you snuff; but, alas ! the breeze has changed. 
The popular taste, the wind of fashion, has 
entirely veered - about ; and, except an occa- 
sional tantalizing whiff from the oasis of a 
receding popularity, the sweet gust of its 
green pastures regales you no more. Or 
you used to work for money — for literal 
bank-notes and pieces of minted metal ; yes, 
mere money was your motive. And you 
would sit up till midnight, or rise in the 
drowsy morning, to get one piece more. 
And so truly was this money your chief 
end — " Where the treasure is, there will 
the heart be also" — do you not feel as if 
* Jeremiah xiv. 6. 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 77 

your money-safe were the metropolis of 
your affections ? Where your money is, is 
not your heart there also ? Were your for- 
tune to clap its wings and fly away, would 
not you feel as if your happiness had fled 
away? Have not your very thoughts got 
a golden tinge ? — and, tracing some of this 
sabbath's meditations back to their source, 
would you not soon land in the till, the 
exchange, the counting-room ? Is not gold 
your chiefest joy ? But have not flashes of 
truth from time to time dismayed you ? — 
" What am I living for? For a make-be- 
lieve like this ? for a glittering cheat which 
(in the way that I am using it) will be for- 
gotten in heaven or felt like a canker in hell ? 
How shall I wake up my demented self 
from this spell-dream, and seek some surer 
bliss, some more enduring joy ? For grant 
that I shall be buried in a coffin of gold, 
and commemorated in a diamond shrine, 
what the happier will it make the me that 
then shall be ?" And even without these 
brighter convictions, without these momen- 



78 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

tary i:eaks in the general delirium of covet- 
ousms;s, do you not feel a duller dissatisfac- 
tion occasionally creeping over you and par- 
alyzing your busy efforts ? " Well — is this 
right? This headlong hunt of fortune, is it 
the end for which my Creator sent me into 
the world? Is it the highest end for which 
my immortal self can live ? Is it the best 
way of bestowing that single sojourn in this 
probation-world which God has given me ? 
And what am I the better ? Ami sure that 
I myself am the happier for it? Dare I 
flatter myself that, in bequeathing so much 
money, I bequeath to my children consoli- 
dated happiness, a sure and certain good, 
an inevitable blessing ?" And such intru- 
sive thoughts, whose shadows, at least, flit 
across most serious minds, are very damp- 
ing to effort — very deadening to diligence 
in business. Merely serving your friends 
— in mere pursuit of fame — merely seeking 
a fortune — you are in constant danger of 
having all motive annihilated, and so all ef- 
fort paralyzed. But whatever be the busi* 



AN EYE TO THE LORD .ESUS. 79 

ness in hand— from the veriest trifle up to 
the sublimest enterprise — from binding a 
shoe-latchet to preparing a highway for the 
Lord — if only you be conscious that this is 
the work which He has given you to do 
you can go on with a cheerful s-erenity and 
strenuous satisfaction, for you will never want 
a motive. And it is just when other mo- 
tives are relaxing into languor, that the com- 
pensation we spoke of comes into play ; and 
the constraining love of Christ restores the 
soul and keeps its rate of activity quick and 
constant as ever. The love of Christ is an 
abiding motive, and can only lose its power 
where reason has lost its place. No man 
ever set the Lord before him and made it 
his supreme concern to please his Master 
in heaven, yet lived to say, " What a fool 
am I ! What a wasted life is mine ! What 
vanity and vexation has Christ's service 
been ! Had I only my career to begin anew, 
1 would seek another master and a higher 
end."* The Lord Jesus ever lives, and 
6 See Life of H ;v. Henry Venn, under A. D. 1785 



80 LIFE IN EARNEST, 

never changes ; and therefore the believer's 
love to his Savior never dies. Growing 
acquaintance may bring out new aspects of 
his character : but it will never disclose a 
reason why the believing soul should love 
him less than it loved at first. Growing ac- 
quaintance will only divulge new reasons 
for exclaiming, " Worthy is the Lamb VJ 
and fresh motives for living, not unto our- 
selves, but unto Him that loved us and gave 
himself for us. 

2. Love to Christ is a motive equal to 
all emergencies. There is a ruling passion 
in every mind ; and w T hen every other con- 
sideration has lost its power, this ruling pas- 
sion retains its influence. When they were 
probing among his shattered ribs for the 
fatal bullet, the French veteran exclaimed, 
" A little deeper, and you will find the em- 
peror." The deepest affection in a believing 
soul is the love of its Savior. Deeper thai* 
the love of home — deeper than the love of 
kindred, deeper than: the love of rest and 
recreation, deeper than the love of life — is 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 81 

the love of Jesus. And so, when other 
spells have lost their magic, when no name 
of old endearment, no voice of onwaiting 
tenderness, can disperse the lethargy of dis- 
solution, the name that is above every name, 
pronounced by one who knows it, will kin- 
dle its last animation in the eye of death. 
And when other persuasives have lost their 
power, when other loves no longer constrain 
the Christian, when the love of country no 
longer constrains his patriotism, nor the love 
of his brethren his philanthropy, nor the love 
of home his fatherly affection — the love of 
Christ will still constrain his loyalty. There 
is a love to Jesus which nothing can de- 
stroy. There is a leal-heartedness which 
refuses to let a much-loved Savior go, even 
when the palsied arm of affection is no long- 
er conscious of the benignant form it em- 
braces. There is a love, which amid the 
old and weary " feel" of waning years re- 
news its youth, and amid outward misery 
and inward desolation preserves its immor- 
tal root ; which even when the glassy eye 



82 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

cf hunger has forgot to sparkle, and the joy 
at the heart can no longer mantle on the 
withered cheek, still holds on, faithful to 
Jesus, though the flesh be faint. This was 
the love which made Paul and Silas, fa- 
tigued and famished as they were, and sleep- 
less with pain, sing praise so loud that their 
fellow-prisoners heard and wondered. This 
was the love which burned in the apostle's 
breast, even when buffeting the Adriatic's 
wintry brine, and made the work which at 
Rome awaited him beam like a star of hope 

through the drowning darkness of that dis- 
ci o 

mal night. This was the love which thawed 
liis pen, when the moan of wintry winds 
made him miss the cloak he left at Troas, 
and impelled him to write to Timothy a tes- 
tamentary entreaty to " hold fast" the truths 
which were hastening himself to martyrdom. 
Devotedness to Christ is a principle which 
never dies, and neither does the diligence 
which springs from it. 

Dear brethren, get love to the Lord Je- 
sus, and you have everything. Union tc 



AN EYE TO THE LORD ;ESUS. 83 

Jesus is salvation. Love to Jesus is re- 
ligion. Love to the Lord Jesus is essen- 
tial and vital Christianity. It is the main- 
spring of the life of God in the soul of man. 
It is the all-inclusive germe, which involves 
within it every other grace. It is the per- 
vasive spirit, without which the most correct 
demeanor is but dead works, and the seem- 
liest exertions are an elegant futility. Love 
to Christ is the best incentive to action— 
the best antidote to idolatry. It adorns the 
labors which it animates, and hallows the 
friendships which it overshadows. It is the 
smell of the ivory wardrobe — the precious 
perfume of the believer's character — the fra- 
grant mystery which only lingers round those 
souls which have been to a better clime. Its 
operation is most marvellous ; for when there 
is enough of it, it makes the timid bold, and 
the slothful diligent. It puts eloquence into 
the stammering tongue, and energy into the 
withered arm, and ingenuity into the dull, 
lethargic brain. It takes possession of the 
soul, and a joyous lustre beams in languid 



64 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

eyes, and wings of new obedience sprout 
from lazy, leaden feet. Love to Christ is 
the soul's true heroism, which courts gigan- 
tic feats, which selects the heaviest loads 
and the hardest toils, which glories in trib- 
ulations, and hugs reproaches, and smiles at 
death till the king of terrors smiles again. 
It is the aliment which feeds assurance — 
the opiate which lulls suspicions — the ob- 
livious draught which scatters misery, and 
remembers poverty no more. Love to Je- 
sus is the beauty of the believing soul ; it is 
the elasticity of the willing steps,. and the 
brightness of the glowing countenance. If 
you would be a happy, a holy, and a use- 
ful Christian, you must be an eminently 
Christ-loving disciple. If you have no love 
to Jesus at all, then you are none of his. 
But if you have a little love — ever so little 
— a little drop, almost frozen in the cold 
ness of your icy heart — oh ! seek more. 
Look to Jesus, and cry for the Spirit till 
you find your love increasing ; till you find 
it drowning besetting sins ; till you find it 



AN EYE TO THE LORD JESUS. 35 

drowning guilty fears — rising, till it touch 
that index, and open your closed lips — ri- 
sing, till every nook and cranny of the soul 
is filled with it, and all the actions of life 
and relations of earth are pervaded by it — 
rising, till it swell up to the brim, and, like 
the apostle's love, rush over in a full assu- 
rance : " Yes, I am persuaded, that neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers, northings present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate us from 
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus 
our Lord/* 3 



$6 LIFE IN EARNEST 



LECTURE IV. 

A FERVENT SPIRIT. 

"Fervent in spirit " — Romans xii. 11. 

The description of work which a man 
performs will depend very much on the 
master whom he serves ; but the amount 
and quality of that work will depend as much 
on the mood of mind in which he does it. 
The master m?/ ne good, and the things 
which he commands maybe good ; but un- 
less the servant have an eager, willing mind, 
little work may be done, and that little may 
not be well done. This is the glory of the 
gospel. It not only invites you to be the 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 87 

disciples of a Savior, whose requirements 
are as worthy of your most strenuous obe- 
dience as he himself is worthy of your warm- 
est love, but it undertakes to give you the 
energy and enterprise which the service of 
such a master demands. Besides assigning 
a good and honorable work for your " busi- 
ness," and Him whom principalities and 
powers adore for your master, the gospel 
offers you the zealous mind which such 
a work requires, and which such a master 
loves. 

But what is a fervent spirit ? 

1. It is a believing spirit. Few men have 
faith. There are few to whom the Word 
of God is solid, to-whom " the things hoped 
for" are substantial, or " the things unseen" 
evident. There are few who regard the 
Lord Jesus as living now, or as taking a 
real and affectionate charge of his people 
here on earth. There are few who yet ex- 
pect to see him, and who are laying their 
account with standing before his great white 
throne. But the believer has got an open 



88 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

eye. He has looked within the veil. He 
knows that the things seen are temporal, 
and the things unseen are eternal. He 
knows that the Lord Jesus lives, and that 
though unseen, he is ever near. He may 
often forget, but he never doubts his prom- 
ise : " And lo ! I am with you always." 
This assurance of his ascending Savior, ev- 
ery time he recalls it, infuses alacrity, ani- 
mation, earnestness. The faith of this is 
fervor. " Yes, blessed Savior! art thou 
present now ? and seest thou thy disciple 
trifling thus ? Is the book of remembrance 
filling up, and aYe these idle words and wast- 
ed hours my memorial there ? And art thou 
coming quickly and bringing thy reward, 
to give each servant as his work shall be ? 
And is this my ' work V Lord, help my 
unbelief. Dispel my drowsiness. Sup- 
plant my sloth, and perfect thy strength in 
me." 

2. A fervent spirit is an affectionate spir- 
it. It is one which cries Abba, Father. It 
is full of confidence and love. Peter had a 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 89 

fervent spirit, but it would be hard to say 
whether most of his fervor flowed through 
the outlet of adoration or activity. You re* 
member with what a burst of praise his first 
epistle begins, and how soon he passes on 
to practical matters. " Blessed be the God 
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which 
according to his abundant mercy, hath be- 
gotten us again unto a lively hope by the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 
to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, 
and that fadeth not away." — " Wherefore 
laying aside all malice, and all guile and hy- 
pocrisies, and all evil speakings, as new- 
born babes, desire the sincere milk of the 
word, that ye may grow thereby." — " Like- 
wise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own 
husbands." — " The elders which are among 
you I exhort, who am also an elder."* And 
as in his epistle, so in his living character. 
His full heart put force and promptitude 
into every movement. Is his master en- 
compassed by fierce ruffians ? Peter's ar- 

* 1 Peter, commencement of chapteis i., ii., iii., v„ 
8* 



30 LIFE IN EARNEST 

doi flashes in his ready sword, and converts 
the Galilean boatman into the soldier in- 
stantaneous. Is there a rumor of a resur- 
rection from Joseph's tomb? John's nim- 
bler foot distances his older friend, but Pe- 
ter's eagerness outruns the serener love of 
John, and past the gazing disciple he bolts 
breathless into the vacant sepulchre. Is the 
risen Savior on the strand ? His comrades 
secure the net, and turn the vessel's head 
for shore ; but Peter plunges over the ves- 
sel's side, and, struggling through the waves, 
in his dripping coat falls down at his Mas- 
ter's feet. Do^s Jesus say, " Bring of the 
fish ye have caught?" Ere anyone could 
anticipate the word, Peter's brawny arm is 
lugging the weltering net with its glittering 
spoil ashore ; and every eager movement 
unwittingly is answering beforehand the 
question of his Lord, " Simon, lovest thou 
me ?" And that fervor is the best, which 
like Peter's, and as occasion requires, can 
ascend in ecstatic ascriptions of adoration 
and praise, or follow Christ to prison and 



a FERVENT SPIRIT. 91 

to death ; which can concentrate itself on 
feats of heroic devotion, or distribute itself 
in the affectionate assiduities of a miscella- 
neous industry. 

3. A fervent spirit is a healthy spirit. 
When a strong spring gushes up in a stag- 
nant pool, it makes some comrnotidrr-at the 
first ; and looking at the murky stream with 
its flotilla of duckweed tumbling down the 
declivity, and the expatriated newts and 
horse-leeches crawling through the grass ; 
and inhaling the miasma from the inky run- 
nel, you may question whether the irrup- 
tion of this powerful current has made mat- 
ters any better. But come anon, when the 
living water has floated out the stagnant ele» 
ments, and when, instead of mephitic mud 
skimmed over with a film of treacherous 
verdure, the bright fountain gladdens its mir- 
rored vedge with its leaping fulness, then trips 
away on its merry path, the benefactor of 
thirsty beasts and weary fields. So the first 
manifestations of the new and the spiritual 
element ip a carnal mind are of a mingled 



92 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

sort. The pellicle of decency, the floating 
duckweed of surface-seemliness, which once 
spread over the character, is broken up, and 
accomplishments, and amusing qualities— 
which made the man very companionable 
and agreeable — have for the present disap- 
peared. There is a great break-up ; and it 
is the passing away of the old things, which 
is at first more conspicuous and less pleas- 
ing, than the appearance of the new. In 
these earlier stages of regenerate history, the 
contrition and self-reproach of the penitent 
often assume the form of an artificial de- 
mureness and voluntary humility ; and in 
the general disturbance of those elements 
which have long lain in their specious stag- 
nation, defects of character formerly hidden 
are perceived sooner than the beauties of a 
holiness scarce yet developed. But " Spring 
up, O well ! sing ye unto ii. ' If this in- 
cursive process go freely on — if the living 
water spring up fast enough to clear out the 
sedimentary selfishness of the natural mind, 
with its reptile inmates — if the inflowings of 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 93 

heavenly life be copious enough to impart a 
truly " fervent spirit"*— come again. Sur- 
vey that character when the love of God has 
become its second nature. , In place of the 
silt and evil savor, the mean and sordid 
motives which once fermented there, view 
the simplicity and godly sincerity, the light- 
welcoming transparency, which reflects the 
Sun of Righteousness above it and the forms 
of truth around it ; and instead of the fast- 
evaporating scantiness of its former selfish- 
ness, follow its track of diffusive freshness 
through the green pastures which it glad- 
dens, and beneath those branches which 
gratefully sing over it.f Like a sweet foun- 
tain, a fervent spirit is beneficent ; its very 
health is healing; its peace with God and 
joy from God are doing constant good , 
the gospel of its smiling aspect impresses 
strangers and comforts saints. And besides 
this unconscious and incidental usefulness, 

* Compare the original, ru -vev^ari $covt($, witi John 
\V. 14, and vii. 38, 39. 
f Psalm civ. 10, 12. 



94 LIFE IN EAB.NESTy 

its active outpourings are a benefit a-s wide 
as its waters run. A Christian who is both 
active and fervent is doing perpetual good, 
and good in the most benignant way. The 
substantial service he does is doubly blessed 
by the joyful, loving, and hopeful spirit in 
which he does it ; and though it were only 
by the gladness which skirts its course, and 
the amenities which bloom wherever it over- 
flows, beholders might judge how " living,' 1 
how life-awakening that water is, which 
Jesus gives to them that believe in him. 

The best, the healthiest, is that calm and 
constant fervor w T e have now described ; but 
just as there are intermitting springs which 
take long time to fill, and then exhaust their 
fulness in a single overflow — and as there 
are geysers which jet their vociferous waters 
high in air, and then are silent for long to- 
gether — so there are Christians who do not 
lack fervor, but it comes in fits. They are 
intermitting springs ; they take long to fill, 
and are emptied in a single gush. Or they 
are geysers. Some years ago they went up 



A FEIU ENT SPIRIT 95 

in an explosion of zeal — a smoking whirl- 
spout of fervor — but all is cold and silent 
now. The water is living, but the well is 
peculiar ; it is only periodically filled ; it 
seldom overflows. But just as you would 
not like to depend on an intermitting foun- 
tain for your cup of daily water, nor to owe 
the irrigation of your fields to the precarious 
bounty of a boiling spring — as the well near 
which you pitch your tent, or build your 
house, is the Elim whose bulging fulness 
invites you to plunge your pitcher at any 
hour, and whose deep-fed copiousness is 
constantly wimpling off in fertilizing streams 
— so you may be happy to perceive the in- 
cidental usefulness even of that zeal which 
comes fitfully ; but you would select as the 
benefactor of the church, and as your own 
resort, the full heart to which you never 
can come wrong, and whose perennial re- 
dundance bespeaks a secret feeding from 
the river which makes glad the city of our 
God. 

4. A fervent spirit is a happy spirit. — 



96 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

Health is happiness. Peace with God is 
the life of the soul, and joy in God is its 
health. That assured and elevated believer 
who enjoys everything in God and God in 
everything, must needs be fervent. His in- 
ward blessedness makes him bountiful, and 
to do good and to communicate are things 
which, in his happy mood of mind, he can 
not help. Some Christians are too deject- 
ed. They got under the covert of a pecu- 
liar theology, or ensconce themselves in 
shadowy caves of wilfulness, or pertinacity, 
or unbelief ; and then complain that they 
can not see the Sun of Righteousness. He 
lightens the world.* Let them come out 
beneath his beams, and at once they will 
feel the fire. Their shivering faith, which 
with them is rather the reminiscence of 
heat, than a resorting to its unfailing source, 
will soon mount up to fervor. To look to 
Jesus is to come to God, and to come home 
to God is to be happy. An estranged or 
suspicious spirit can not be fervent, Theu 
* John i. 9. 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 97 

some Christians are not fervent because they 
are cumbered with so many things. They 
carry all their own burdens, and from their 
sympathizing disposition they have charged 
themselves with many burdens of their breth- 
ren also ; but instead of devolving these per- 
sonal and relative solicitudes on an all-suf- 
fering Savior, they carry the whole melan- 
choly load themselves, A fearful or a fret- 
ful spirit can not be fervent ; but there is no 
need for a believer in Jesus to be troubled 
or afraid.* Let him deposite all his anxie- 
ties in that Ear which is gracious enough to 
attend to the most trivial, and leave them in 
that Hand which is mighty enough to dis- 
perse the most tremendous ; and relieved of 
? this incubus, his spirit will acquire an elas- 
ticity equal to the most arduous or most 
multifarious toils. And some believers are 
not sufficiently fervent, from being strait- 
ened in themselves. They do not open 
their souls to those felicitating influences 
with which a God of love surrounds them 

* John xiv. 1. 
9 



98 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

on every side. There is as much comfort 
in the Word of God, and as mnch beauty 
in his works, and as much kindness in his 
dispensations, as, admitted into the soul, 
would inundate it with ecstasy. But many 
hearts are perverse ; they let gloomy thoughts 
and bitter fancies flow freely in, and are al- 
most jealous lest a drop of strong consola- 
tion should trickle through on this deluge 
of Marah. Brethren, it depends on which 
floodgate you open, whether you be drowned 
in a tide of joy or of sorrow. It depends 
on whether your well-springs are above or 
beneath, whether your consolation or your 
grief abounds. If you listen to what the 
Amen, the Faithful Witness, is saying,* and 
what God the Father is saying,f and what 
the Spirit and the Bride ^are saying,! and 
what a glorious universe is saying, || and 
what the gracious events in your daily his- 
tory are saying,' 1 ) your murmurings will sub* 

* John xiv.-xvi. f Matt, iii- 17. 

t Rev. xxii. 17. || Ps. viii., xix., civ. 

§ Ps. cvii. Isaiah xxxviii. 19. Gen. xxxv. 3. 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 99 

side into silence, and your vexing thoughts 
will be drowned in gratitude. Think much 
of God's chief mercy, and take thankful 
note of his lesser gifts. And when you 
have put on this girdle of gladness, your glo- 
ry will sing and your gratitude will dance.* 
Your soul will be happy, and your joy will 
find outlets of adoring praise and vigorous 
industry. 

5. A fervent spirit is one filled with the 
Spirit of God. When Jesus cried, " If 
any man thirst, let him come unto me and 
drink," and promised that rivers of living- 
water should flow through the heart of the 
believer, "he spake of the Spirit, which 
they that believe on him should receive." 
The Holy Spirit is actually bestowed on the 
people of God. He is to them a better 
Spirit, restraining and superseding their 
own. He is the author of that athletic self- 
denial and flesh-conquering fervor of which 
they are conscious from time to time. It is 
he who gives such delight in drawing near 
*Ps. xxx. 11, 12- 



100 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

to God, that the believer at seasons could 
" pray and never cease ;" and it is he who 
gives that transforming affection to the per- 
son of Christ, and that heroic ardor in the 
service of Christ, to which inactivity is irk- 
some, and silence oppressive. And who- 
soever would enjoy the gentle manuduction 
which leads into all truth and all duty — 
whosoever would persevere in the placid dis- 
charge of allotted labor, and maintain amid 
it all a calm and thankful walk with God, 
must put himself at the disposal of this heav- 
enly Visitant. The heart is " dry as sum- 
mer's dust" from which the Spirit of God 
departs ; and that is ihe believing, loving, 
happy, and energetic heart, in which the 
Holy Spirit dwells. 

6. A fervent spirit is a prayerful spirit. 
The Holy Spirit is the New Testament gift 
most absolutely promised in answer to pray- 
er* — and though, perhaps, the gift whose 
bestow^ent is least the matter of a lively 
consciousness to the recipient at the rno- 
* L'ike xi. 13. John xiv, 14, 16; xvi. 24. 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 101 

ment, the gift from which, in the long-run 
of life, the largest and most important re- 
sults are evolved, and the gift which, in the 
retrospect of eternity, the believer may find 
that he enjoyed more abundantly and more 
constantly than he himself ever imagined. 
As it is, there are times when the presence 
of this Almighty Comforter is easily real- 
ized. When the soul is lifted far above its 
natural selfishness, so that it can make vast 
sacrifices without any misgiving — when for- 
tified against its natural timidity, so that it 
can face frightful perils without any trepida- 
tion — and when invigorated with such un- 
wonted ardor as to forget its natural indo- 
lence, and not feel its inherent weakness, 
the soul can readily understand that this 
mighty strengthening inwardly is the work 
x>f the Holy Spirit. And it is this persua- 
sion which brings the believer strength in 
weakness. Conscious of lethargy creeping 
over him — alarmed at the declension of his 
zeal, and the waning of his love — fearful to 
wh*d f his present apathy may grow 7 , and re- 
9* 



102 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

membering how different were the days of 
old — he breathes a prayer, at first faint and 
desponding, but still a prayer : " Wilt thou 
not revive us again ? Awake, O north wind ; 
come thou south." And, while he is yei 
speaking, he begins to revive. As if the 
clear weather were brightening the atmo- 
sphere, the great realities grow distinct and 
near. The things eternal are seen again, 
and the powers of the coming world are felt. 
His soul is restored. Or a great work is 
given him to do, and his strength is small. 
"O Lord, with thee is the fountain of life. 
Lord, pity me, for I am weak." And the 
Lord pities him, and sends forth his quick- 
ening Spirit ; and the difficulty is surmount- 
ed, and the work is done : and, without so 
much as feeling the fire and water which 
lay between, he gains the wealthy place. * 
7. A fervent spirit is one which easily 
sunders a man from selfishness, and sloth, 
and other besetting sins. On a winter's 
day T have noticed a row of cottages, witb 
a deep load of snw on their several roofs ; 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. 103 

but, as the day wore on, large fragments 
began to tumble from the eaves of this one 
and that other, till, by-and-by, there was a 
simultaneous avalanche, and the whole heap 
slid over in powdery ruin on the pavement : 
and, before the sun went down, you saw 
each roof as clear and dry as on a summer's 
eve. But here and there you would ob- 
serve one with its snow-mantle unbroken, 
and a ruff of stiff icicles round it. What 
made the difference ? The difference was 
to be found within. Some of these huts 
were empty, or the lonely inhabitant cow T - 
ered over a scanty fire ; while the peopled 
hearth and the high-blazing fagots of the 
rest created such an inward warmth that 
grim winter relaxed his melting gripe, and 
the loosened mass folded off and tumbled 
over on the miry street. It is possible by 
some outside process to push the main vol- 
ume of snow from" the frosty roof, or chip 
off the icicles one by one. But they will 
form again, and it needs an inward heat to 
create a total thaw. And so, by sundry 



104 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

processes, you may clear off from a man's 
conduct the dead weight of conspicuous 
sins ; but it needs a hidden heat, a vital 
warmth within, to produce such a separa- 
tion between the soul and its besetting ini- 
quities, that the whole wintry incubus, the 
entire body of sin, will come spontaneously 
away. That vital warmth is the love of 
God abundantly shed abroad — the kindly 
glow which the Comforter diffuses in the 
soul which he makes his home. His ge- 
nial inhabitation thaws that soul and its fa- 
vorite sins asunder, and makes the indo- 
lence, and self-indulgence, and indevotion, 
fall off from their old resting-place on that 
dissolving heart. The easiest form of self- 
mortification is a fervent spirit. 

8. And a fervent spirit is the most abun- 
dant source of an active life. In heaven 
there is a perfect activity, because in heaven 
tnere is a perfect fervor. They are all hap- 
py there. They have a sufficient end in all 
they do. There is no w T earying in their 
work, for there is no waning in their love, 



A FERVENT SPIRIT. ' 105 

The want of a sufficient object would make 
any man idle. A friend once found the 
author of " The Seasons" in bed long after 
noon ; and upbraiding him for his indolence, 
the poet remarked that he just lay still be- 
cause, although he were up, he would have 
nothing to do But, even in this sluggish 
world, there are those whose hearty relish 
of their work and sense of its importance so 
inspire, that they are very loath when slum- 
ber constrains them to quit it, and often pre- 
vent the dawning in order to resume it. It 
was mathematical fervor which kept Newton 
poring on his problems till the midnight wind 
swept over his papers the ashes from his 
long-extinguished fire. It was artistic fer- 
vor which kept Reynolds with the pencil in 
his glowing hand for thirty-six hours togeth- 
er, evoking from the canvass forms of beau- 
ty that seemed glad to come, it was po- 
etic fervor which sustained Dryden in a 
fortnight's phrensy, when composing his 
" Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," heedless of 
privations which he did not so much as per- 



10G LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ceive. And it was scientific fervor which 
dragged the lazy but eloquent French natu- 
ralist, Buffon, from beloved slumbers to his 
still more beloved studies, for many years 
together. There is no department of human 
distinction which can not record its feats of 
fervor. But shall science, with its corrup- 
tible crowns, and the world, with its vanities, 
monopolize this enthusiasm ? If not, let 
each one consider, " What is the greatest 
self-denial to which a godly zeal has prompt- 
ed me ? Which is the largest or the great- 
est work through which a holy fervor has 
ever carried me ?"* 

* It would have been right, had there been room, 
to mention some things which are detrimental or 
fatal to fervor of spirit. 1. Guilt on the conscience. 
2. Debt and worldly entanglements. 3. Sabbaths not 
sanctified. 4. Late and frequent visiting. 5. Indul- 
gence'in frivolous literature. 6. Restraining prayer. 
7. A wrong theology. 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 107 



LECTURE V. 

THE THREEFOLD CORD. 

*Notslotkj^ in business ; fervent in spirit; serving the 
Lord." — Romans xii. 11. 

Were you ever struck with the sobriety 
of Scripture ? There are many good thoughts 
in human compositions, and many hints of 
truth in human systems ; but in proportion 
as they are original or striking, they border 
on extravagance. You can not follow them 
fully till you find yourself toppling on the 
verge of a paradox, or are obliged to halt 
in the midst of a glaring absurdity. There 
are many excellent ideas in the old philoso- 
phy, and some valuable principles in the 



108 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ethics of later schools ; but they all show, 
though it were in nothing but their extreme- 
ness, their frail original, their human infirmi- 
ty their wrong-side bias. And so is it with 
many religious systems, built on insulated 
texts of Scripture* They are not without a 
basis of truth, but that basis is partial. The 
extremeness of religionism pounces on a 
single text, or a single class of texts, and 
walls them off from the rest of revelation, 
and cultivates them exclusively — bestows 
on them the irrigation of constant study, and 
reaps no harvests except those which grow 
on this favorite territory — and looks on all 
the rest of the Bible as a sort of common, 
an unenclosed waste, a territory good for 
little or nothing, except a short occasional 
excursion ; ay, and perhaps frowns on an- 
other class of texts with a secret jealousy, 
as texts which had better never have been 
there — a dangerous group, whose creeping 
roots or wafted thistle-down threaten evil to 
the enclosure of their own favorite little sys- 
tem. If the texts so treated be doctrioal, 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 109 

the result of this partiality, this exclusive- 
ness or extremeness, is sectarianism ; if the 
texts so treated be practical, the result i$ 
religious singularity. But sectarianism of 
doctrine and singularity of practice, whatev 
er countenance they get from single clauses 
and detached sentences of Scripture, are 
contradicted and condemned the moment 
you confront them with a complete Bible. 
Hence it happens, that while there never 
was a doctrinal or practical error which had 
not some text to stand upon, there never 
was one which dared encounter openly and 
honestly the entire Word of God. In other 
words, there has seldom been an error which 
did not include some important truth ; but 
just as surely as it included some truth, so 
it excluded others. And just as oxygen 
alone will never make the atmosphere, or 
hydrogen alone will never make the ocean, 
or red beams alone will never make the 
sun, so one fact, or one set of ideas, will 
never make the truth. A truth, by abiding 
alone, becomes to all intents an error. 
10 



110 LIFE IN EARNEST 

Nothing can be more different fiom the 
partiality of man than the completeness and 
comprehensiveness of Scripture. Nothing 
can be more opposite to man's extremeness 
than the sobriety of Scripture. It does not 
deal in hyperbole or paradox ; it puts the 
truth, calmly, fully, and in all its goodly 
proportions. Unlike the systems of man's 
invention, its ethics do not flutter on the 
solitary wing of one only virtue, nor do they 
dot along on the uneven legs of a short the- 
ology and a longer morality. Its philan- 
thropy does not consist in hating yourself, 
nor does its love to God require you to for- 
get your brother. Its perfection of charac- 
ter is not pre-eminence in one particular, 
nor does it inculcate any excellence which 
requires the annihilation of all the rest. 
Though neither a see-saw of counterpoising 
virtues and vices, nor a neutral mixture of 
opposing elements, there is a balance of ex- 
cellence, a blending of graces, in the gospel 
ideal of character. It forgets neither the 
man himself, nor the God above him, nor 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. Ill 

the world around him. It teaches us to 
live godly, but it does not forget to teach us 
to live righteously and soberly. It urges 
diligence in business, but it does not omit 
to enjoin fervor of spirit and devotedness to 
the Lord. 

I do not know that we can select a more 
opportune exemplication of these contrary 
principles — the partiality of human religion 
and the comprehensiveness of scriptural re- 
ligion — than the text with which you are 
now so familiar, and the treatment which its 
several precepts have received at the hands 
of men. I think it may be very easily shown 
that each separate clause has been the motto 
of a several sect, the watchword of a sepa- 
rate party : each right, so far as it remem- 
bered that special clause — each wrong, so 
far as it forgot the other two. 

1. First, " Not slothful in business." — 
There have been in all ages those who were 
very willing to sum up religion in dischar- 
ging the duties of their calling. If they were 
servants, they were conscious of great in- 



112 LIFE .N EARNEST. 

dustiy, and a real attention to their employ* 
ers' interest. If wives or mothers, they 
were notable for keeping at home, and car- 
ing after their own concerns. They looked 
well to the ways of their household, and ate 
not the bread of idleness ; and could the 
trim threshold and each tidy arrangement 
of the well-ordered dwelling tell the full 
tale of anxious thoughts, and early rising, 
and worrying bustle, which have been ex- 
pended upon them, happy the empire which 
had such prime minister as rules this little 
realm. If men of business, they feel that 
they are busy men. They mind their own 
affairs, and do not interfere in other men's 
matters. They are at it late and early ; the 
summer's sun does not seduce them from 
their dingy counting-room, nor do the amen- 
ities of literature bewitch them from the 
anxieties of money-making. They seldom 
treat themselves to a holyday, and, what is 
more to the purpose, they do not despatch 
business by halves ; they work in good ear- 
nest. They feel as if the chief end of man 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 113 

lay somewhere about the terminus of their 
own trade or profession, and they push on 
accordingly. Then there mingles with it 
all a complacent feeling. " It is not for 
myself I thus tug and strain, and grow pre- 
maturely old : it is for others. ' He that 
provides not for his own house, hath denied 
the faith, and is worse than an infidel.'— 
6 If any man will not work, neither let him 
eat.' We are commanded to redeem the 
time, and are forbidden to be slothful in 
business." And if to this again should be 
superadded a certain amount of overt and 
ostensible religion — if this busy man or cum- 
bered housekeeper should withal read a 
daily chapter, and maintain the regular form 
of family worship, and the equally regular 
form of churchgoing — above all, if his busi- 
ness should prosper, and nothing occur to 
vex his conscience, he is very apt to feel — 
" What lack I yet? True, I pretend to no 
peculiar sanctity ; but I believe I am as 
honest, and industrious, and sober, as those 
who do. I may not get into the raptures 
10* 



114 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

into which some try to work themselves 
nor do I fuss about from sermon to sermon 
and from meeting to meeting, as many do; 
but I believe my respect for religion is as 
real, and my intentions as good, as theirs 
And though I do not lay the same stress on 
speculative points and matters of faith, no 
man can accuse me of neglecting the weigh- 
tier matters of the law." Now the indus- 
trious element in this character is good, but 
if this be the whole of it, in the Bible bal- 
ance it will be found deplorably wanting. A 
man may be all that you describe yourself, 
without being born again ; he may be all this, 
and his heart never have been made right with 
God ; and of all the work he has done so 
heartily, nothing may have been done as un- 
to the Lord — in the animation of that love, 
and in the singleness of that loyalty, without 
which the most facing toil is but an earnest 
self-idolatry. And he may be all this with- 
out any of that fervor of spirit which will 
make a man happy in that world where the 
things of our present faith are the visible 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 115 

sources of joy, and where psalm-singing and 
the other outpourings of ecstatic hearts are 
the exercises most congenial. 

2. But then again — % ^vent in spirit." 
Others have erred in subliming the whole 
of Christianity into fervor. They fancy that 
there is no outlet for piety except in emo- 
tion. They forget that the engine may be 
doing most work when none cf the steam is 
blowing off ; and therefore they are not con- 
tent except they feel a great deal, and live 
in constant excitement. They forget that 
the best form that feeling can take is the 
practical form — -the praying, praising, work- 
ing form. Or if it should take this form, 
their fervor is ill-directed. It is not fairly 
distributed ; they are fervent in secret or in 
the sanctuary, but not fervent in society ; 
they are fervent in controversies, but not in 
truths conceded ; they are fervent in the 
things of their own denomination, but not 
in the things of Jesus Christ ; or if fervent 
in his cause, they fix on the fields of labor 
far away, and contemn those nearer heme. 



116 LIFE IN EARNEST 

Their fervor is reserved for hallowed places 
and devotional hours, and does not pervade 
their daily life. They will rise from a prayer 
in which they h* Y - expatiated on the glory 
of the lattei aay — " Thy kingdom come, 
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," 
and some ordinary duty is awaiting them ; 
they are asked to fulfil some prosaic ser- 
vice, to do some such matter-of-fact em- 
ployment as angels in heaven are apt to do ; 
and the sight of actual labor disperses their 
good frame in a moment . their praying fer- 
vor is not a working fervor. Or they have 
just been singing, under some extraordinary 
afflatus, a hymn about universal peace or 
millennial glory ; but the unopened letter 
turns out to be a despatch from some villa- 
nous correspondent : or the moment the 
worship is over, sonic gross negligence or 
some provoking carelessness accosts them, 
and the instant explosion proves, that were 
they living in the millennium, there would 
be at least one exception to the universal 
peace. Or they have come back from some 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 117 

jubilant missionary meeting, wheie their 
hearts were really warm, where they loudly 
cheered the speeches, and where their ears 
tingled at the recital of some affecting in- 
stance of liberality; and they are hardly safe 
in their homes, when the ill-favored collec- 
tor assails them, and they are asked for the 
solid sympathy of their substance. Yes — 
oh ignominy ! oh bathos ! — after they have 
given their tears, asked for their gold ! And 
they feel as if it were a fatal transition, a 
most headlong climax, from delicious emo- 
tion down to vulgar money. And thus it 
is that they continue to let as much feeling 
vanish in inaction, as much fervor fly off in 
mere emotion, as, if turned on in the right di- 
rection, might have propelled some mighty 
enterprise, or conducted to a safe and joy- 
ful conclusion many a work of faith and 
labor of love. 

3. " Serving the Lord." In Old-Testa- 
ment times it was not unusual for persons 
of eminent piety to dedicate themselves en- 
tirely to temple-service, waiting on God in 



118 LIFE ES EARNEST 

prayer continually night and day. Thus 
Samuel was dedicated to the Lord all the 
days of his life : so we presume was the 
maid of Gilead, Jephthah's daughter: and 
so was Anna the prophetess, who departed 
not from the temple the eighty-four years of 
her long widowhood. In seeking this se- 
clusion they were practically carrying out 
the psalmist's devout behest : " One thing 
have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek 
after ; that I may dwell in the house of the 
Lord all the days of my life, to behold the 
beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his 
temple." And a pleasant life it were, away 
from a stormy world in the calm pavilion 
of God's own presence, and away from the 
tantalizing phantoms, vexing cares, and stun- 
ning noise of delirious mortality, to see no 
beauty less soul-filling than his own, and 
hear no voice less assuring than His who 
says, " My peace I give unto you."' But 
the gospel dispensation is not the era of an- 
chorets, and recluses, and temple-devotees ; 
or, more proper v speaking, every disciple 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 119 

of the Savior ought to be alike a devotee. 
He should live not to himself, iut to Him 
who loved him. He should be a seif-de- 
voted, a dedicated man — a living sacrifice, 
but a sacrifice diffusing its sweet savor in 
Hie scenes of ordinary life, and regaling, not 
heaven alone, but earth, with its grateful 
exhalations. He should seek to behold his 
Lord's beauty and dwell in his Lord's pres- 
ence all the days of his life ; but now that 
neither Jerusulem nor Samaria is the tem- 
ple, his believing heart should be the shrine, 
and his ascending Savior's promise — " Lo, 
I am with you" — should be the Shekinah. 
Wherever he goes, he should carry his 
Lord's presence along with him ; and what- 
ever he is doing, he should be doing his 
heavenly Master's work. However, this 
life of active devotedness does not suit the 
taste of many. In order to serve the Lord, 
they feel that they must leave the living 
world. They must off and away to some 
cleft of the rock, some lodge of the far wil« 
derness, some — 



120 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

" sacred solitude, 
"Where Quiet with Religion makes her home*" 

To be diligent in business they feel incom- 
patible with serving the Lord ; and even that 
more hallowed business which is occupied 
with ministering to the bodies and souls of 
men is a rude break in their retirement, a 
jar in their contemplative joys. They 
would lather be excused from anything 
which forces them into contact with unwel- 
come flesh and blood, and reminds them of 
this selfish world and its gross materialism 
Their closet is more attractive than the cot- 
tage of poverty ; meditations of the rest 
which remaineth are more congenial than 
toils in the work of the day ; and pensive 
lamentations over the world's wickedness 
come mere spontaneous than real earnest 
efforts to make this bad world better. Now 
it is impossible to be too devoted, if that 
devotedness make you correspondingly fer- 
vent in spirit and diligent in business. You 
can not pray too much, though you should 
pray without ceasing, if your prayer take a 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 121 

practical direction, and lead you to do good 
without ceasing. But it is just as possible 
to run away from the Lord's service by 
running into retirement as by running into 
the world. In the retirement of the ship, 
and then in the completer retirement of the 
whale's belly, Jonah was as much a rebel 
and a runaway as in the noisy streets of 
Joppa. Had he washed to " serve the 
Lord," his " business" was to have been at 
Nineveh. And it little matters whether i\ 
be the recluse of the desert who absconds 
from his brethren, and leaves the sick to 
tend themselves, and the ignorant to teach 
themselves, and the careless to convert 
themselves — or the recluse of the closet, 
who leaves the neglected household to take 
care of itself, the slipshod children to look 
after themselves, and the broken furniture 
to mend itself: each in his own way is sloth 
ful in business, under a self-deceiving pre- 
text that lie is serving the Lord. 

Thus you perceive that each of the three 
classes — the mere bustlers, the mere feel* 
11 



122 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ers, and the mere devotees — by being right 
in only one thins;, are altogether wronff. 
The.se are not fancy sketches, nor are they 
studies from the antique. True, you may 
find the counterpart of the first class in the 
correct morality and heartless formalism of 
that worldly professorship, that " Whole Du- 
ty of Man" pharisaism which once abounded 
In these very lands. And you may repre- 
sent the second by that fifth-monarchy fer- 
vor, that unproductive zeal, which has mark- 
ed some periods of the church, which pos- 
sibly marks some sections still. And you 
will find the third exemplified in all the mys- 
tic devotion and day-dreaming quietism of 
world-weary recluses, popish and protestant, 
in every age. Though all can quote one 
fragment of this text, all are wrong, by not 
being able to quote the whole. Those who 
are diligent in business, but in that business 
do not serve the Lord, their selfish diligence 
is but a busy idleness, a hypocritical activi- 
ty. Their time-bounded and self-reverting 
work is the ineffectual labor of the convict 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 123 

who digs the pit and fills it up again- -who 
draws water from the well and pours It back 
again. And so the devotedncss which re- 
sults in no diligence is like the planning of 
a house which is never built, the daily pur- 
posing of a journey which is never set about. 
The fervor of spirit which, withal, is sloth- 
ful in business, is like the stream falling on 
the mill-wheel, but the connecting shaft ia 
broken — and though the wheel turns nim- 
bly round, the detached machinery stands 
still, and no work is done ; or like the dis- 
connected engine and tender, which bolt 
away by themselves, and leave the helpless 
train still standing where it stood. 

Now in opposition to all these defective 
versions, these maimed and truncated rep- 
resentations; this verse delineates the Chris- 
tian character in its completeness, hard- 
working, warmly-feeling, single-eyed, " not 
slothful in business"— " fervent inspirit" — 
" serving the Lord." And if you look at 
the Christian philosophy of the subject, you 
will find that it is the single eye which 



124 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

awakes the fervent spirit, and the fervent 
spirit which sets the busy hands and feet in 
willing motion. 

1. It is an eye fixed on Jesus which kin- 
dles the fervent spirit. An unconverted mail 
is not happy. There is a dull load on his 
spirit — a dim cloud on his conscience — he 
scarcely knows what he would be at — but 
he certainly is not happy. If a considerate 
man, he is aware that there must be a joy 
in existence which he has not yet struck out 
— a secret of more solid bliss which he hith- 
erto has not hit upon. He is not at peace 
with God. He has not secured an explicit 
reconciliation with his Creator and Sover- 
eign. God's frown is upon him — a frown 
as wide as is the sinner's universe. Go 
where he may, he can not get out into the 
clear daylight of a glad conscience and a 
propitious heaven. And it is not till he 
finds his way into the Goshen of the gospe 1 
the sun-lit region on which the beams of 
God's countenance still smile down, through 
the doorway by which an ascending Savior 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 125 

entered heaven — it is not till, from the gross 
darkness and palpable gloom of a natural 
condition, a man is led into the grateful light 
and glorious liberty of the sons of God — it 
is not till then that he knows the ecstasy of 
undiluted joy and the perfection of that 
peace which passeth all understanding. It 
is not till the Spirit of adoption makes him 
a child of God that he thoroughly feels him- 
self a man ; and it is in the sweet sense of 
forgiveness, and in the transporting assu- 
rance that he is now on the same side with 
Omnipotence, that he first breathes freely. 
The thrill of a sudden animation sweeps 
through all his frame ; and, encountering an 
unwonted gayety all around him, he per- 
ceives an unwonted energy within him. 
Peace with God has brought him power 
from God, and with the Lord he loves to 
dictate, there is no work which he is loath 
to do ; and with that Lord upon his side, 
none which he can not hope to do. The 
convict-labor and hireling-tasks of the alien 
and bondsman are exchanged for the free- 
11* 



126 LI^E IN EARNEST. 

will offerings and affectionate services of a 
son and a disciple. Reconciled to God, ho 
is reconciled to everything which comes from 
God ; and full of the love of Christ, he 
courts everything which he can do for Christ. 
" Come, labor, for I rather love thee now 
Come, hard work and long work, I am in a 
mood for you now. Come, trials and cross- 
es, for I can carry you now. Come, death 
for I am ready for thee now." His relation 
to Christ lias put him in a new relation to 
everything else ; and the same fountaii* 
which has washed the stain from his con 
science having washed the scales from his 
eyes, an inundation of light and of beauty 
bursts in from the creation around him, 
which hitherto was to him as much an un- 
known universe as its Creator was the un- 
known God ; and the boundless inflowings 
of peaceful images, and happy impressions, 
and strong consolations, dilate his soul with 
an elasticity, an enterprise, and courage, as 
new as they are divine. He has found a 
SAvior, and his soul is happy. The Lord 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 1*^7 

Jesus is bis friend ; and his spirit, once so 
frigid, is become a fervent spirit. His new 
views have made him a new man. 

2. The fervent spirit creates the indus- 
trious life. Sulky labor and the labor of 
sorrow are little worth. Whatever a man 
does wilh a guilty feeling, he is apt to do 
wrong ; and whatever he does with a mel- 
ancholy feeling, he is likely to do by halves 
Look to that little boy sitting down to his 
hated lesson after a burst of passion. Do 
you notice how long the same page lies 
open before the pouting student, and how 
solemnly he watches the blue-bottle raging 
round the room and bouncing against the 
window ? Look at his blurred copy-book, 
its trembling strokes and blotted loops a 
memento of this angry morning. And the 
sum upon the slate, only here and there a 
figure right, an emblem of his rebellious 
mind, all at sixes and sevens with itself. It 
is guilt that makes him a trifler. It is guilt 
that makes him blunder. Guilt makes him 
wretched ; and therefore all he does w 



128 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

wrong. But sometimes grief disables or 
disinclines for exertion as much as guilt. 
You may remember times when such a sor- 
row possessed you, that you not only forgot 
to eat. your daily bread, but had no heart to 
do your daily work. You did not care to 
set your house in order, for some stunning 
intelligence or fearful foreboding had para- 
lyzed all your energy. You did not care 
to hear your children's tasks, for the shad- 
ows of yon sick-room had diffused a look 
of orphanage on them and on everything. 
And the more delightsome the recreation 
once had been, the more congenial the la- 
bor, so much the deeper was the funereal 
die it had now imbibed, and the more did 
your heart revolt from it. Sorrow makes 
the eyes heavy, even when they can not 
sleep : and, for inefficiency, next to the 
blundering work of a guilty conscience, is 
the dull work of a weary or wounded spirit. 
If you could only shed tranquillity over the 
conscience, and infuse joy into the soul, you 
would do more to make the man a thorough 



THE THREEFOLD CORD. 129 

worker than if you could lend him the force 
of Hercules or the hundred arms of Briareus. 
Now, the gospel, freely admitted, makes 
the man happy. It gives him peace with 
God and makes him happy in God. Its 
strong consolation neutralizes the sting of 
reluctant labor and the curse of penal toil 
Its advent of heavenly energy takes the lan- 
guor out of life, and much of its inherent 
indolence out of lazy human nature. It 
chases spectres from the fancy and lions 
from the street. It gives industry a noble 
look which selfish drudgery never wore ; 
and from the moment that a man begins to 
do his work for his Savior's sake, he feels 
that the most ordinary works are full of 
sweetness and dignity, and that the most 
difficult are not impossible. " Through 
Christ strengthening me, I can do all things." 
And if any one of you, my friends, is weary 
with his work — -if dissatisfaction with your- 
self, or sorrow of any kind, disheartens you 
— if, at any time, you feel the dull paraly- 
sis of conscious sin, 01 the depressing in- 



130 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

fluence of vexing thoughts — look to Je- 
sus and be happy. Be happy, and go to 
work. 



A WORD TO ALL 131 



LECTURE VI. 

A WORD TO EACH AND TO ALL CONCLU- 
SION. 

'• Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit; serving the 
Lord." — Romans xii. 11. 

Christian industry is just the outlet of 
a fervent spirit, a Christ-devoted heart. 
The industry which is not fervent is not 
Christian, and on the ojher hand, the love 
which does not come out in action, the fer- 
vor which does not lead to diligence, will 
soon die down. He who has an eye to 
Christ in all he does, and whose spirit is. 
full of that energy, that love to his work 
and his brethren, and his Master in heaven, 



132 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

which the Holy Spirit gives, wiL not soon 
weary in well-doing. 

1. Some of you are servants. Some 
of you are in families where there is no 
fear of God, and some of you serve em- 
ployers who take no interest in you, who, 
however hard you toil, and however well 
you do your work, never thank you nor 
notice your exertions. This is discour- 
aging ; hut before you entered that family, 
had you not entered the service of the 
Lord Jesus Christ? and when you came to 
this new place you surely did not leave this 
higher and nobler service. Very true, the 
individual from whom you receive your 
immediate orders may be very unreason- 
able, and exceedingly unamiable, and the 
thanks you get may be sorry remuneration 
for your conscientious industry. But have 
you not a Master in heaven, whose eye is 
always upon you, who takes interested note 
of all you do, and who, whatever you do 
in secret for Ids sake, will reward you open- 
ly? You do not mean to say that all your 



A WORD TO M,L. 133 

end in working is to get so much wages, 
with a kind word or a look of approval now 
and then. If you carry the spirit of dis- 
cipleship into your every-day duties, you 
will find that there is a way to make the 
meanest occupation honorable and the most 
irksome employment easy. Work which 
you do for the Lord's sake, will never be 
wearisome, and however little man may no- 
tice or acknowledge it, your labor in the 
Lord will never be vain. And I know not 
if there be any department of life where 
there is more abundant room for a truly 
Christian ambition than the calling which 
you occupy. Wither like Eliezer of Da- 
mascus, you serve a b i/her of the Faithful, 
or like Joseph and the Israelitish maid, be in 
the household of a pagan or a worldling ; 
you have singular opportunities for adorn- 
ing the doctrine of your God and Savior. 
Good man as Abraham was, and good man 
as Eliezer was, there was once a time when 
Abraham, in a tone of evident disappoint- 
ment, said, " Behold, to me thou hast giv- 
12 



134 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

en no seed, and lo, one born in my house 
is mine heir." But so completely had the 
consistent kindness and fidelity of Eliezer 
won the affection of his chief, that at the 
last Abraham could scarcely have wished 
a better heir than his servant, or Eliezer 
found a more indulgent father than his mas- 
ter. Joseph had no motive for serving 
Pharoah, except that anxiety to fulfil an im- 
portant office well, and that hearty love of 
labor which distinguish men of a healthy 
mind and conscientious spirit. But such a 
zealous charge did he take of Pharoah's 
interests, so intelligently and sleeplessly did 
his eye travel through *Ue realm, that Egypt 
wore another aspeu inder Joseph's rule, 
and its revenues became as rich as a prov- 
ident and benignant administration could 
make them. The little maid of Israel was 
a captive, and if the joy of the Lord had 
not been her strength, she would have had 
no spirit to work. She would have pined 
after her home among the hills of Samaria, 
and when she thought of the pleasant cot* 



A WORD TO ALL. 135 

tage from which fierce ruffians had torn her 
away, and named over to herself, one by 
one, the playfellows whom she would nev- 
er see again, she would have broken her 
young heart and sat down in sulky silence, 
or perhaps have died. But she loved the 
Lord God of Israel; and as he had sent 
her to Damascus and into the house of a 
heathen lady, she made up her mind and 
set to work right earnestly, and soon got on 
to take a real interest in her new abode. 
She loved her mistress and was sorry for 
the deplorable sufferings of her afflicted 
lord, and suggested the visit to Elisha which 
resulted in his wondrous cure. And Doth 
Joseph and the little maid, by serving the 
Lord with a fervent spirit, not only made 
their own life pass pleasantly in a foreign 
land, but they made a great impression on 
those around them. Joseph's God was 
magnified in the eyes of Pharoah, and the 
little maid soon saw Naaman a worshipper 
of the true Jehovah. And you who are 
in the service of others, seek to serve the 



136 JIFE IN EARNEST. 

Lord. Perhaps like Joseph and the .ittle 
maid you are far from home. Perhaps like 
them you are doing work for those in whom 
you had no interest formerly, and who even 
now have not the fear of God before them. 
But your Lord paramount is the Lord Je- 
sus himself; the real Master who has sent 
you here and given you this uphill work to 
do is Christ ; and if you only set about it 
for his sake, with a happy, interested, reso- 
lute mind, your work will grow every day 
easier; your conscience will sing; the light 
of the Lord's presence will gild the dim 
passages and stranger-looking chambers of 
your place of sojourn ; your character will 
ere long commend itself, and better still, 
may commend your Master in Heaven. 
" For he that in these things serveth Christ 
is acceptable to God, and approved of 
men." 

2. Some of you are scholars either re- 
ceiving the education which fits for ordinary 
life, or which may qualify you for some 
particular profession. Here too you have 



A WORD TO ALL. 13? 

need of industry. I hope you love learn- 
ing for its own sake ; I hope you love it 
still more for the Lord's sake. The more 
things you know, and the more things you 
can do, the more respected, and consequent- 
ly, the more influential and useful will you 
hereafter be. If you grow up an ignorant 
man few will care for your company. Peo- 
ple will be laughing at your mistakes and 
your blunders. And even if you should 
be wishful to do good, you will scarcely 
know how to set about it. The usefulness 
and happiness of your future life depend 
very much on the amount of solid learning 
and graceful accomplishments, and above 
all, on the extent of bible knowledge which 
you presently acquire, and if you be only 
willing you may acquire as much as ever you 
please. Tc use the words of the most 
philosophic of British Artists, "Nothing is 
denied to well-directed diligence." Long 
ago, a little boy was entered at Harrow 
School. He was put into a class beyond 
his years, and where all the scholars had 
12* 



138 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

the advantage of previous instruction de- 
nied to him. His master chid him for his 
dulness, and all his own efforts could not 
raise him from the lowest place on the form. 
But, nothing daunted, he procured the gram- 
mars and other elementary books which his 
class-fellows had gone through in previous 
terms. He devoted the hours of play, and 
not a few of the hours of sleep, to the mas- 
tering of these ; till in a few weeks he grad- 
ually began to rise, and it was not long till 
he shot far a-heacl of all his companions, 
and became not only dux of that division 
but the pride of Harrow. That boy, whose 
career began with this fit of energetic ap- 
plication, you may see his statue in St. 
PauFs cathedral to-monow ; for he lived 
to be the greatest oriental scholar of mod- 
ern Europe, and most of you have heard 
the name of Sir William Jones. God de- 
nies nothing in the way of learning to well- 
directed diligence. It is possible that you 
may be rather depressed than stimulated 
when asked to contemplate some first-rate 



A WORD TO ALL. 139 

name in literature or science. When you 
see the lofty pinnacle of attainment on 
which that name is now reposing, you fee 
as if it had been created there rather than 
had travelled thither. No such thing. The 
most illustrious in the annals of philosophy, 
once on a time, knew no more of it than 
you now do. And how did he arrive at his 
peerless proficiency? By dint of diligence, 
fay downright painstaking. When Newton 
was asked how he came by those discover- 
ies which looked like divination or intuitions 
of a higher intelligence rather than the re- 
suits of mere research, he declared that he 
could not otherwise account for them unless 
it were that he could pay longer attention 
co the subject than most men cared to do. 
In other words, it was by diligence in his 
business that he became the most renowned 
of British sages. The discovery of grav- 
itation, the grand secret of the universe, was 
not whispered in his ear by any oracle. It 
did not drop into his idle lap a windfall from 
the clouds. But he reached it by self- deny 



140 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

ing toil, by midnight study, by the large 
command of accurate science, and by bend- 
ing all his powers of mind in the one direc- 
tion, and keeping them thus bent. And 
whatever may be the subject of your pur- 
suit, if you have any natural aptitude for it 
at all, there is no limit to your proficiency 
except the limits of your own pains-taking. 
There is no wishing-eap which will fetch 
you knowledge from the east or west. It 
is not likely to visit you in a morning dream, 
nor will it drop through your study roof 
into your elbow chair. It is not a lucky 
advent which will alight on your loitering 
path some twilight, like Minerva's owl, and 
create you an orator, an artist, or a scholar 
on the spot. It is an ultimatum which you 
must make up your mind that it is w r orth 
your w 7 hile attaining; and trudge on stead- 
ily toward it, and not count that day's work 
hard, nor that night-watching long, which 
advances you one step toward it, or brings 
its welcoming beacon one bright hope near* 
e*» 



A WORD TO ALL. 141 

3. Some of you are teachers. It is 
much to be lamented that there are so few 
enthusiasts in this honorable and important 
work. Many who are engaged in it regard 
it as a bondage, and sigh for the day which 
shall finally release them from its drudgery 
and din. They have never felt that theirs 
is a high calling, nor do they ever enter the 
school-room with the inspiring conscious- 
ness, that they go as missionaries and pas* 
tors there. They undervalue their schol- 
ars. Instead of regarding them as all that 
now exists of a generation as important as 
our own ; instead of recognising in their 
present dispositions the mischief or benefi- 
cence which must tell on wide neighbor- 
hoods ere a few short years are run ; in- 
stead of training up immortal spirits and 
expansive minds for usefulness now and 
glory afterward, many teachers have never 
seen their pupils in any other light than as 
so many rows of turbulent rebels, a rabble 
of necessary torments, a roomful of that 
mighty plague of which the Nile of ouf 



M2 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

noisy humanity is all croaking and jumping 
over. And many undervalue themselves. 
Instead of recollecting their glorious voca- 
tion, and eying the cloud of teacher-wit- 
nesses with whom they are encompassed ; 
instead of a high-souled zeal for their pro- 
fession, as that which should form the plas- 
tic mind after the finest models of human 
attainment and scriptural excellence, many 
regard their office as so menial that they 
have always the feeling as if themselves 
were pedants. To prescribe the task, to 
hear the lesson, to administer monotonous 
praise and blame, is the listless round of 
their official perfunctoriness. But there are 
few fields of brighter promise than the call- 
ing of a teacher. If he give himself wholly 
to it, if he set before him the highest object 
of all tuition, the bringing souls to Christ; if 
he can form a real affection for his scholars, 
and maintain a parental anxiety for their 
proficiency and their principles ; if he has 
wisdom enough to understand them, and 
kindness enough to sympathize with them; 



A WCRD TO ALL. 143 

ff he has sufficient love for learning to have 
no distaste for lessons, he will be sure to 
inspire a zeal for study into the minds of 
many, he will win the love of all except 
the very few whose hearts are deaf-born, 
and in a short time the best features of his 
own character will be multiplying in spheres 
far-sundered in the kindred persons of 
grateful pupils. Should he live long 
enough, they w r ill praise him in the gate of 
public life, or cheer his declining days in 
the homes which he taught them to make 
happy. Or should he die soon enough, 
the rest from his labors will ever and anon 
be heightened by the arrival of another and 
another of the children w T hom God hath 
given him. 

But without descending to more minute 
particulars, let me remind you, my friends, 
that all of you who are members of this 
church have got a special " business" as 
the professed disciples of ,Jesus Christ. 
In the day when Christ said to you, " Arise, 
follow me, ' he called you to a life like big 



144 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

own, a life of industry and self-denial, and 
continual doing good. You are a consis- 
tent Christian in proportion as you resemble 
him whose fervent spirit poured out not 
more in his midnight prayers than in his 
daily deeds of mercy, and who, whether he 
disputed with the doctors in the Temple, or 
conversed with the ignorant stranger at the 
well, or fed the five thousand with miracu- 
lous loaves, or summoned Lazarus from the 
tomb, was still about his Father's " busi- 
ness." They little understand the Chris- 
tian life, who fancy that a slothful or lan- 
guid profession will secure an abundant en- 
trance into the heavenly kingdom. If the 
believer's progress from the cross to the 
crown be, as it is again and again repre- 
sented, a race, a wrestling, a warfare, a fight, 
a continual watching, and a constant vio- 
lence, there is good reason for the exhor- 
tations, " give diligence to make your call- 
ing and election sure. We desire that ev- 
ery one of you do show diligence to the 
full assurance of hope unto the end ; that 



A WORD TO ALL. 145 

ye be not slothful, but followers of them 
who through faith and patience inherit the 
promises. Wherefore, brethren, seeing that 
you look for such things, be diligent that 
you may be found of him in peace, with- 
out spot and blameless." 

It needs diligence to keep the conscience 
clean. " Herein do I exercise myself, to 
have always a conscience void of offence 
toward God and toward men." It needs 
diligence to keep up a happy hopefulness 
of spirit. " Gird up the loins of your 
mind, be sober, and hope to the end." It 
needs diligence to maintain a serene and 
strenuous orthodoxy. " Watch ye ; stand 
fast in the faith ; quit you like men ; be 
strong." It needs diligence to maintain a 
blameless life. " Ye have not yet resisted 
unto blood, striving against sin." It needs 
diligence to lead a life conspicuously use- 
ful and God-glorifying. " Seeing we are 
compassed about with so great a cloud of 
witnesses (as Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, 
13 



46 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

and Abraham, and Moses), let us lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so 
easily beset us, and let us run with patience 
the race that is set before us, looking unto 
Jesus." And it needs diligence to attain a 
joyful welcome from Jesus and a full re- 
ward. " And besides this, giving all dili- 
gence, add to your faith, virtue [fortitude] ; 
and to fortitude, knowledge ; and to knowl- 
edge, temperance ; and to temperance, pa- 
tience ; and to patience, godliness ; and to 
godliness, brotherly-kindness ; and to broth- 
erly kindness, charity. Wherefore the rath- 
er, brethren, give diligence to make your 
calling and election sure ; for if ye do 
these things [fortitude, &c] ye shall never 
fall : for so an entrance shall be ministered 
unto you abundantly into the everlasting 
Kingdom of our God and Savior Jesus 
Christ." — " And I heard a voice from 
heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are 
the dead which die in the Lord from hence- 
forth ; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may 
rest from their labors, and their works do 



A WORD TO ALL. 14? 

follow them." — " Let us labor, therefore 
to enter into that rest."* 

To labor in the word and doctrine is the 
business of one ; to feed the flock of God 
and rule the church of Christ is the busi- 
ness of others ; to " serve tables," to care 
for and comfort the poor, and see that all 
things be done decently and in order, is the 
business of yet others ; to teach the young 
and instruct the ignorant is the business of 
some ; and to train up their households in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord is 
the business of others ; to obey their parents 
and to grow in wisdom — in favor with God 
and man — is the business of many ; and to 
do work for others, with a willing hand and 
a single eye, is the business of many more. 
The work of the day needs diligence : much 
more does the work of eternity. It needs 
fervent diligence to be constantly serving 
our fellows ; and it needs no less diligence 
to be directly serving Christ. To tend the 
sick, to visit the widows and fatherless in 
• 2 Pet. i. 5-7, 10, 11. Rev. xiv. 13. Heb. iv. 11. 



148 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

iheir affliction, to frequent the abodes of in- 
sulated wretchedness or congregated de- 
pravity, to set on foot schemes of Christian 
benevolence, and, still more, to keep them 
going — all this needs diligence. To put 
earnestness into secret prayer ; to offer peti- 
tions so emphatic and express, that they are 
remembered afterward, and the answer 
watched for and expected ; to commune 
with one's own heart, so as to attain some 
real self-acquaintance ; to get into that hum- 
ble, contrite, confessing frame, where the 
soul feels it sweet to lie beneath the cross, 
and " a debtor to mercy alone, of covenant 
mercy to sing ;" to stir up one's soul to a 
thankful praising pitch ; to beat down mur- 
muring thoughts and drive vexing thoughts 
away ; to get assurance regarding the foun- 
dations of the faith, and clear views of the 
truth itself; to have a prompt and secure 
command of Scripture ; to possess a large 
acquaintance with the great salvation, and a 
minute acquaintance with all the details of 
Christian duty — all this .needs no less dili- 



A WORD TO ALL. 149 

gence an our part, because God must give 
it or we shall never show it. To put life 
into family worship ; to make it more than 
a duteous routine ; to make its brief episode 
of praise, and prayer, and bible-reading, a 
refreshful ordinance, and influential on the 
day ; to give a salutary direction to social 
intercourse, and season with timely salt the 
conversation of the friendly circle ; to drive 
that " torpid ass,"* the body, to scenes of 
duty difficult and long-adjourned ; to make 
a real business of public worship ; to scowl 
away all pretexts for forsaking the solemn 
assembly; to spirit the reluctant flesh into a 
punctual arrival at the house of prayer, and 
then to stir up the soul to a cordial partici- 
pation in all its services ; to accompany with 
alert and affectionate eyes the reading of 
God's word, and listen with wakeful ear to 
the exposition and applicaW n of its lively 
oracles ; to contribute a tuneful voice and a 
singing heart to our New-Testament offer- 
ing of praise, and to put the whole stress 
* Calvin in loco. 

13* 



150 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

of an intelligent, and sympathizing, and be- 
lieving earnestness into the supplications oi 
the sanctuary, so that each petition shall as- 
cend to the throne of grace with the delib- 
erate signature of our Amen — all this re- 
quires a diligence, none the less because 
unless God work it in us, we shall never of 
ourselves muster up sufficient fervor thus to 
serve the Lord. 

Dear brethren and Christian friends, con- 
sider what I say. There is little time to 
apply it ; but you have heard from this text 
some hints of important truth — apply them 
for yourselves. As reasons why we desire 
to see a church more industrious and not 
less fervent and unworldly than the church 
has usually been, and as motives why each 
right-hearted man among you should this 
night start afresh on a career of busy devo- 
tedness and fervent industry, let me remind 
you — 

1. Herein is the Father glorified, that ye 
bear much fruit. 

2. Herein will you truly resemble, and 



CONCLUSION. 151 

in measure re-exhibit the character of your 
blessed Lord and Master. 

3. Hereby will yourselves be made far 
happier. 

4. Hereby will the world be the better 
for your sojourn in it. 

5. Hereby will the sadness of your de- 
parture be exceedingly alleviated. 

6. And hereby will your everlasting joy 
be unspeakably enhanced. 

Forbearing to dwell on these different 
considerations, let me revert for a little to 
the latter two. 

A life of diligence and holy fervor pre- 
pares the believer for a peaceful departure. 
" Father, I have finished the work which 
thou gavest me to do ; and now I come to 
thee." It was with unspeakable satisfaction 
Jiat the Savior contemplated his return to 
the Father's bosom ; and the reason was, 
because he knew so well that he had fin- 
ished his Father's business. He could 
look back on the weary days and sleepless 
uights of his ministry, on the long years of 



152 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

his incarnation ; and he saw that there was 
no righteousness which he had not fulfilled, 
no precept of the holy law which he had 
not magnified. His memory could not re- 
call an idle word or a wasted hour ; and 
even from the solemn twilight of Gethsema- 
ne his eye could trace serenely back the 
whole expanse of his earthly history, and 
see not one word which he would wish to 
recall, not one act which he could desire to 
alter ; no sermon which, if he had to preach 
it over again, he would make more plain or 
more importunate ; no miracle which, if it 
had to be performed afresh, he would do in 
a more impressive or effectual manner. He 
knew that there was no omission, no defect, 
and though the whole were to be done anew, 
he felt that the words could not be more 
gracious, nor the works more wonderful, 
than they had actually been. " Father, I 
have glorified thee on earth. I have finished 
the work which thou gavest me to do ; and 
now I come to thee." The Lord Jesus 
was the first and the ast who was ever able 



CONCLUSION. 153 

to say this ; but through his strength made 
perfect in their weakness, some have made 
a nearer approach to this blessedness than 
their more remiss and indolent brethren. It 
was the grief of the pagan emperor Titus, 
when a day transpired in which he had 
learned no knowledge or done no good — 
11 1 have lost a day !" And — 

" 'Tis a mournful story 
Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell 
Of morning's firm resolves the vanished glory, 
Hope's honey left within the withering bell, 
And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloomed 
so well !"* 

But it is a far more mournful story when 
the eve of life arrives, to be constrained to 
sigh, " I have lost a lifetime !" — " God gave 
me one lifetime, and it was once in my pow- 
er to spend it as Aquila and Priscilla spent 
theirs — as Paul spent his — as Phebe spent 
hers. But now, that only life is closing, 
and, wo's me ! how have 1 bestowed it ? In 
making pin-cushions and playing the piano 
* Mrs. Sigourney. 



154 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

— in paying morning calls and evening vis- 
its." — " And J? — I have spent it in read 
ing newspapers and novels — in dancing and 
singing songs, and telling diverting stories." 
— " And I have spent it in drinking and 
smoking — in games of cards and billiards — 
in frequenting taverns and theatres — in read- 
ing coarse tales and books of blasphemy." 
Yes : and though you should not need to 
look back on a life thus sinfully spent, it 
will be sad enough to review a life let idly 
slip. To think that by a right starting and 
a persevering continuance in well-doing, it 
was once in your power to have proved the 
large and permanent benefactor of your gen- 
eration — to think that had you only begun 
with the Lord and held on in fervor of 
spirit, you might by this time have finished 
works which would make many" bless your 
memory, and planted seeds of which hun- 
dreds would reap the pleasant fruits when 
yourself were in the clay ; and then to re- 
member that once on a time you had it in 
contemplation — it was all planned out and 



CONCLUSION. 155 

resolved upon, and day-dreamed over and 
over, but never resolutely gone about — to 
recollect " the morning's firm resolves" and 
sunny purposes, and then look at — 

"the vanished glory, 
Hope's honey left within the withering bell, 
And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloomed 
so well" — 

how dreary it will make your deathbed, if 
capable of deliberate reflection then ! How 
disconsolate it will render the retrospective 
evening of your days should you reach old 
age ! And how different it will make your 
exit from his, who, looking back on his 
eventful career, could say, " I am now ready 
to be offered, and the time of my depart- 
ure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, 
I have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me 
a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, 
the righteous judge, shall give me at that 
day." 

A life of Christian diligence is followed 
oy an abundant entrance and a full reward 



156 LIFE IN EARNEbT. 

There are two principles deep-seated in our 
nature : philosophy has got no name for 
them, but the Bible has an eye to each of 
them, and the gospel speaks to both of 
them. The possessions which we chiefly 
prize are either those which we have earned 
by our own industry, or gifts we have got 
from those we truly love. Perhaps there 
is some little slide in your desk, some se- 
cret drawer in your cabinet, which you do 
not often open — but when on a quiet holy- 
day you pull it gently out and look leisurely 
at it, your eye fills with tears. You read 
the date on the faded book-marker with a 
pensive smile, or you press the little picture 
to your lips and drop upon your knees, to 
pray for him whose image that little picture 
is. But a hard-visaged stranger peering 
over your shoulder might marvel what all 
this emotion meant ; for he would not give 
a few shillings for the whole collection, and 
would think it liker the thing to be affected, 
by the bunch of bank-notes, and bills, and 
government-securities, in the adjacent lock- 



CONCLUSION 157 

er. And why do you prize it so ? That 
picture was a keepsake from your brother 
when he crossed the Indian main ten sum- 
mers since ; that broidered riband is the 
only relic of the sister's love, who made you 
many a like remembrance, but whose moul- 
dering fingers will make no more. Love 
lingers in these relics, and that is the reason 
why, when you stuff the bank-notes in your 
pocket, you clasp these trifles to your heart. 
Far more, if the gift or the bequest be one 
of vast intrinsic value. The estate, the 
house, the lands, which a fatherly kinsman 
or a dear friend conveyed to you — you prize 
them infinitely more than if they had come 
to you in the course of nature or by the 
laws of ordinary succession. You delight 
to show people over these grounds ; and 
when they ask how long they have been in 
your family, your voice falters when you 
tell how they came to be yours. Sometimes 
when you look over the pastures and corn- 
fields, the water tingles in your eye ; for you 
feel that you are looking not at vulgar roods 
14 



158 LIFE IxV EARNEST. 

and common enclosures, but are gazing on 
acres of affection, on an expanse of unac- 
countable kindness. You commemorate the 
unusual gift by the giver's name. By some 
adjective of gratitude you connect it with his 
dear memory; and much as you may value 
it for its intrinsic worth, it is more precious 
still for the beloved donor's sake. 

Then next to the possessions round which 
there hovers some symbol of living affection 
or departed kindness, we prize those pos- 
sessions in which we recognise the fruits of 
our own diligence, the purchase of our own 
pains-taking. Next to the keepsakes of 
friendship, we delight in the rewards of per- 
sonal industry. What a bright coin was 
that first sovereign which your own dili- 
gence ever earned ! How solid and weighty 
did it feel ! How fair did the monarch's im- 
age and superscription shine on its fresh- 
minted face, and how endless did its capa- 
bilities appear ! Was there any thing which 
that wonderful coin could not accomplish, 
any object of desire which it could not pur- 



CONCLUSION. 159 

chase ? And wherefore such overweening 
affection for that one golden piece, for had 
you not possessed from time to time pocket- 
money of your own before ? Yes — but it 
came too easily ; it wanted the pleasant zest 
of industry ; it did not bring into your bo- 
som, as this one does, a whole freight of 
happy recollections, frugal hours, and self- 
denying labors, condensed into one solid 
equivalent, one tangible memento. What 
are the books in your library which you 
chiefly prize ? Next to the gift-bible which 
solemnized the first birthday when you could 
read it ; next to the book which your dying 
friend lifted from his pillow, and with your 
name tremulously inscribed, handed you on 
your last visit, when he had strength to do 
it; are they not the books which rewarded 
your blushing proficiency at the village- 
school, or commemorated your nightly la- 
bors in the first and happiest years of col- 
lege-life, or those which your long-hoarded 
savings first enabled you to purchase ? Why 
do you look with a kindlier eye on that ju- 



160' LIFE IN EARNEST. 

venile literature than on the long rows of 
glittering learning and august philosophy 
which fill your crowded shelves? Why, 
hut because there is something of a pleas- 
ant personal peculiar to them ? The light 
of early days and industrious hours still 
floats around them. They are the sunny 
sepulchre in which much of your former 
self lies pleasantly embalmed, ready to start 
into a mellower life the moment memory 
bids it. Or why — to take the case already 
supposed, the opulent possessor of estates, 
which the love of another gave him — why 
is it that in the midst of luxuries and accom- 
modations as abundant as wealth can pur- 
chase or ingenuity suggest — why is it that 
fruit from trees of his own planting, or from a 
garden of his own tending, tastes so sweet? 
Why is it that the rustic chair of his own 
contriving, or the telescope of his own con- 
structing, so far surpasses any which the 
craftsman can send him ? Why, the reason 
is, those apples have an aroma of industry, 
a smack of self-requiting diligence peculiar 



CONCLUSION. 16l 

to themselves. That rustic seat is lined 
with self-complacent labor and the pleasant 
consciousness of having made that telescope 
himself has so sharpened the maker's eye, 
as greatly to augment its magnifying power. 
God has so made the mind of man, that a 
peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits 
of personal industry. 

I repeat that the possessions which we 
chiefly prize — those of which the heart 
keeps the most tender yet tenacious hold — 
are not the windfalls of fortune, nor the heir- 
looms of regular succession, but the gifts 
of affection and the fruits of pains-taking ; 
those in which something of ourself, or a 
dearer than ourself, still lives, and speaks, 
and feels. Now in regard to the supreme 
possession, the inheritance of heaven, the 
God of Love has consulted both of those 
deep-seated principles of the human soul. 
The heaven itself, the passport through its 
gates, and the right to its joys, are the pur- 
chase and the gift of Another. Nor is ii to 
the believer the least enhancing element in 
14* 



162 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

its priceless possession that il is entirely iho 
donation and bequest of his dearest friend. 
Looking forward to the pearly gates and 
golden streets of the celestial city, its love- 
built mansions and its life-watered paradise, 
the believer in Jesus delights to remember 
that they are purely the purchase, and as 
purely the gift of Immanuel. To think that 
he shall yet have his happy home on that 
Mount Zion ; that with feet no longer sin- 
defiled he shall tread its radiant pavement 
and stand on its glassy sea ; that with fin- 
gers no longer awkward he shall tell the 
harps of heaven what once he was and who 
made him what he is ; that with a voice no 
longer trembling he shall transmit alono; the 
echoes of eternity the song of Moses and 
the Lamb ; that his shall yet be a brow on 
w T hich the drops of toil will never burst, and 
an eye which tears will never dim ; that he 
himself shall wear a form that years shall 
never bend, and a countenance which grief 
can never mar ; that his shall yet be a char- 
acter on wlrch the stains of time will le*we 



CONCLUSION. 163 

no trace, and his a conscience pure enough 
to reflect the full image of Him who sits upon 
the throne — the thought of all this is amaze- 
ment, ecstasy. But there is one thought 
more which puts the crown upon this bles- 
sedness— the climax on this joy : — 

" These glorious hopes we owe to Jesus' dying love/* 

The name of this fair inheritance — Free 
Grace, God is love, Jebovah-Tsidkenu — 
identifies it with that name which the be- 
liever loves beyond all others. Heaven is 
doubly dear, as the heritage purchased for 
him by his Divine Redeemer ; and all its 
glory is so heightened and solemnized, 
when he connects it with that adorable 
Friend who acquired it for him and conveys 
it to him, that though another heaven were 
in his offer, that other he would not accept. 
That heaven to which Immanuel is the liv- 
ing way — on whose earthward entrance ato- 
ning blood is sprinkled, on whose many 
mansions and amaranth crowns are the sym- 
bols which connect them with Calvary, and 



164 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

amid all whose countless joys the river of 
deepest pleasure is the love of Jesus — this 
is the only heaven to which the believer ex- 
pects an entrance, and is the one of which 
his intensest longings say, " Would God 
that I were there !" 

But even in this purchased possession 
there are ingredients of delight of an origiu 
more personal to the believer himself — de 
tails of special blessedness, for the germe of 
which he must go back to his own earthly 
history ; and just as the sweetest surprisals 
here below are those in which some effort 
of benevolence long bygone reverts upon 
you in its happy results — when you meet a 
stranger, and are charmed with his Christian 
intelligence and spiritual congeniality, and 
lo ! it turns out that his religious history 
dates from a casual conversation with your- 
self in the guest-chamber or the public con* 
veyance ; or when you take refuge from the 
storm in a wayside cottage, and surveying 
with eager interest its arrangements of un- 
wonted comfort and tastefulness, or listen- 



CONCLUSION. 165 

ing to the bible-lesson of its little children 
fresh from school, mysterious hints of some 
similar yet different scene steal in upon your 
memory, till you begin to think, " I have 
surely been here before ;" and anon the full 
truth flashes out : you have been there be- 
fore, when it was a very different scene — 
when a drunken husband, and ragged chil- 
dren, and broken furniture, aroused your 
desponding commiseration ; but the tract 
which you that day left has introduced so- 
briety, and a sabbath, and a family-bible, 
nto that abject home, and made it what 
your grateful eyes now see — so the sweetest 
surprisals of eternity will be similar resur- 
rections of the works of time. When the 
disciple has forgotten the labor of, love, he 
will be reminded of it in the rich reward ; 
and though he never thought any more of 
the cup of cold water which he gave, or the 
word in season which he spake in Jesus's 
name — though he made no memorandum 
of the visits of mercy which he paid, or the 
asylums which he found for the orphan and 



186 LIFE IN EARNEST. 

the outcast — it seems that they are regis- 
tered in the book of remembrance, and will 
all be read by their happy author in the re- 
viving light of glory.* To find the marvel- 
lous results which have accrued from feeble 
means — to encounter higher in salvation 
than yourself those of whose salvation you 
scarcely ever noped to hear, and learn that 
an entreaty, or prayer, or forgotten effort of 
your own, had a divine bearing on the joy- 
ful consummation — to find the prosperous 
fruit already growing on the shores of eter- 
nity from seeds which you scattered on the 
streams of time — with what discoveries of 
unexpected delight it will variegate the joys 
of the purchased possession, and with what 
accessions of adoration and praise it will 
augment the exceeding weight of glory ! Oh 
brethren ! strive to obtain an abundant en- 
trance and a full reward. Seek to be so 
useful, that the world will miss you when 
away : or whether this world miss you 01 
not, that in a better world there may be 
• Dan. xii. 3 ; Matt. xxv. 34-40 ; Matt. x. 42. 



CONCLUSION. 167 

many to welcome you as you enter it, and 
many to follow you when you have long 
been there. And above all, so live for 
Christ, so travail in his service, that when 
you fall asleep, a voice may be heard from 
heaven, saying, " Blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord : yea, saith the 
Spirit, that they may rest from their la- 
bors, and their works do follow them." 



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